Alchemy and Magic
by Leva
Summary: Things can't possibly go smoothly when you mix magic with alchemy ... a Gargoyles crossover with Full Metal Alchemist.
1. Chapter 1

Alchemy and Magic

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Author's Notes:

This is a Full Metal Alchemy/Gargoyles crossover. It is set in early 2007 (about when the story itself will be finished). Gargoyles started airing in 1994, so that puts it thirteen years after the start of the series. In FMA, it goes AU at the end of the series -- Ed lands in NYC in 2007 rather than in Europe in the 1920's

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He wasn't dead.

That was the first thought in Edward Elric's head, shortly followed by, _Crap, the automail again. Winry's going to kill me._

He knew even before he opened his eyes that his arm was a dead weight, because he'd tried to put his hand to his furiously pounding head and his it hadn't moved. It was busted -- how badly, he wasn't sure yet.

He opened his eyes and wished he hadn't.

Pain lanced through his skull. The world spun. He rolled over -- the world spun more -- and retched weakly onto the ground, only lifting his head a few inches. He tasted blood amid the bile and collapsed weakly back.

Pavement. He was lying on pavement. Wet, cold -- very cold -- cement under his cheek and hip. The sockets for his automail were starting to burn with pain akin to an ice cream headache, only on a grand scale, as the metal transmitted the icy cold directly to bone and nerve.

After a long moment, the earth stopped rolling underneath him and he pushed himself half upright with his left hand. His leg was also out of commission.

"Where the hell ..." He blinked around him. He was lying in an alley in what was indisputably a foreign city.

_Alphonse. Oh, God, Alphonse. Did it work? Are you even alive? Why am I still alive?_

Memories returned in a rush, overpowering the headache. He had to find Al. Find his brother.

Nausea threatened to return when he flipped over, but he forced it back. He tucked his good leg underneath him, pushed with his good arm, and managed to make it up onto his feet -- foot. The automail leg trailed behind him, far more hindrance than help, as he hopped to the support of the closest wall.

_Blew the circuits out, _he guessed. The structure seemed okay, and Winry had designed it to take a hell of a power surge given his usual methods for alchemy, but he'd been dealing with -- well, hell squared.

_Why am I even still alive? _ He wondered again as he hopped to the end of the alley. It wasn't far, really, but it felt like miles. His hip was cramping by the time he made it, and he leaned with exhaustion against the wall.

It wasn't home.

That much was obvious. The street beyond was jammed with cars -- sleek, fancy cars, in a myriad of colors. There were thousands -- tens of thousands -- of people filling the sidewalk.

_Okay, so we can answer the question, _'Why am I still alive_' later -- first question is, where am I? This isn't London._

He'd never seen a city like this before. He looked up -- nearly passed out -- closed his eyes, swallowed back an urge to vomit, and then stared in awe at the skyscrapers looming about him. They had to be hundreds of stories tall, and they glowed with electricity. Above all the others, and not too far away, one particularly tall skyscraper appeared to have a castle on top of it.

"Hey. Kid. You okay?"

He blinked, looked down, cursed himself for being unwary, and realized the owner of the voice was wearing a uniform. He had dark skin, greying white hair, and frown. And very definitely a military uniform. _Shit. Soldier._

In his experience, a strange army in a strange place was pretty much bad news. He spun to run, forgetting for an instant that he was crippled. His leg collapsed underneath him and he went _splat _in a large, rather noxious, and icy puddle.

"Easy, kid," the soldier said, "I'm not going to ..."

Whatever the soldier was going to _not do _he didn't get a chance to say, because Edward clapped his good hand against the palm of the dead automail palm, summoned alchemic power, and yanked a wall up between him and the man.

He heard cursing, and the soldier yelling for backup.

Ed scrambled up to a standing position and started hopping away as fast as he could go. Unfortunately, that wasn't very fast at all, and he found himself cornered with more guys in uniforms appearing at the other end of the alley. _These _men had gun out, and they were pointing them at him.

"It's just a kid," one of the men said, uncertainly.

"Let me go!" Ed said, holding his hands menacingly a few inches apart. The damaged arm hung limply from his shoulder, useless for anything _but _this.

"Easy, kiddo," the man said. "We won't hurt you. Easy there."

_He sounds like he's talking to a frightened animal_, Ed thought, _Wonder what I look like to him? _ "I'm fine. Leave me alone."

"Gotcha!" Arms wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his side.

Ed struggled frantically, "Damnit, let me go!"

"Settle down, kid," the voice said, gently. "I'm not going to hurt you. My name's Bluestone."

He stopped struggling, for the moment. Waited. The man set him down -- Ed clapped his hands again and flung the man into a wall with a wave of stone. He also lost his balance, tumbled to the ground, and scrambled away as best he could with one working leg and arm.

He saw a basement window at eye level -- a fumbled _clap_, and he vaporized the glass, lunged forward, wormed through the narrow space, and fell several feet to the ground. His automail leg took most of the impact, but it was a bad landing and the force of it jammed his hip hard; he saw stars and darkness for a moment.

_Hope I didn't break something there_, he thought, with alarm, when pain faded and coherent thought returned. Steel could be fixed -- bone took longer to heal.

_How in the hell am I going to get away?_ He wondered dumbly. He was practically immobilized, there were strange soldiers after him, and he hadn't a foggy clue how to get ahold of anyone he knew.

Not for the first time he wished he could fix his own automail with alchemy. However, after one disastrous attempt years before that had resulted in awe inspiring pain, a loss of concentration, and a mess so bad that Winry had to build him a whole new leg ... he hadn't tried since. It was one thing to transmute his arm into a sword. It was quite another to mess with the interface between the more delicate mechanisms of the mail's powerplant and his own nerves.

Silence, from above.

He waited, sure they would try to extract him. He contemplated transmuting the windows shut, but they were across the room and he'd rolled and tumbled quite a distance when he fell. And anyway, since the soldiers weren't going to go away, he figured sooner or later he'd need to talk to them and come to an agreement with them. Preferably one that didn't involve attempts to grab him.

_Damnit_, he thought, savagely, weighing his options. Lack of information was really hindering his decisions. He didn't know where he was, what the situation was, who his friends or enemies were.

More silence.

He waited. They _would _be back.

The pain in his hip faded. He could move it. Nothing broken, apparently.

More waiting. He judged an hour passed before anyone approached him, though he could see flashing lights now -- red and blue, over and over again.

"Hey." A voice said, from the window.

Female.

"What's your name?"

He considered several possible responses to that, and decided that _Full Metal _was possibly dangerous if he'd landed somewhere that didn't like alchemists. _Elric_, likewise. He settled on, "Ed." Ed was common enough.

"Ed, my name's Elisa." The voice said, wryly. "That's some magic you were throwing around. You scared people pretty good."

"Not magic. Alchemy."

She was quiet for a brief moment, then, "Are you a Child?"

"Who are you calling little ...!" He found he didn't have the energy for a good rant, and wound down dispiritedly.

"Not what I meant. Child of Oberon. Which I take it you're not. Okay." The voice said, sounding remarkably calm. _Child of what? _"How come you ran?"

"I've got reasons to avoid soldiers."

"Soldiers ...?" A question there. Then the woman explained, "Not soldiers, Ed. I'm a police detective. Those were cops. Where are you from?"

"Risembool. In Amestris."

"Never heard of it, which might actually explain a bit." Elisa said, confirming his guess that he'd wasn't in the same world anymore. "So how long are you planning on staying in that basement?"

_Damnit_, he thought savagely, she was mocking him.

"I mean," she said sensibly, "we just want to help you. You got friends or family you'd like us to call?"

_Call. Yes. Mustang. Bastard that he is, he's probably my best chance for finding out what happened in any detail, assuming he's still alive. Winry won't be home yet so I can't call the Rockbells._

"Can you call Central HQ -- Colonel Roy Mustang?

"What's the number?" He saw a flash of light -- the woman had a small, glowing object in her hand.

"Number?" He blinked. Thought. Provided the four digit number from memory.

"Rest of it?" She asked.

"There _is _no rest of it."

Silence. After a moment, the woman said, somewhat to his mystification, "Kid, I really don't think you're in Kansas anymore."

_I don't know where Kansas is, but I for sure am not in my own world anymore._

-------------------

Elisa regarded the kid thoughtfully, over a sheaf of paperwork. _Deal with it, Maza, _Chavez had said. _This one's up your alley. CPS wouldn't know what to do with him. We both know that._

He'd thrown a remarkable amount of magic around, and these days, the cops pretty much had a protocol for dealing with magic. That procedure was best summed up as, "Call Elisa and Bluestone, shut up, and pretend you didn't see anything."

Given that this approach resulted in far less paperwork for all parties concerned, and arguably less damage to people and property, there hadn't been many complaints about the routine.

Unfortunately, she didn't have a foggy clue what to do now. She could, and had, dealt with everything from rampaging fey to space aliens. Teenage boys a long way from home, on the wrong side of a magical gate -- so not up her alley. He _had _confirmed he'd passed through a gate, much to her complete lack of surprise.

_I figured Child of Oberon when Bluestone called me yelling about magic, but I'll cheerfully accept teenager with super powers from another world as a plausible explanation. _

She regarded him thoughtfully, earning a glare back for daring to look at him. He was short. Tiny, really. He claimed to be sixteen; that _might _be possible, but she thought thirteen or so was more likely. And he was crippled -- his arm and leg hung limply, apparently paralyzed. He'd insisted on hopping to her car, however, refusing to let anyone touch him. He'd been angered by the offer of a wheel chair at the station, and had only reluctantly -- very reluctantly -- leaned on her arm to get up the steps.

He was blond -- very blond, in a spun-gold fairy tale sense. His hair was long, caught back in a braid, with loose bits escaping and falling around his face. In truth, he was a very good looking boy -- and he had the sort of features that would mature heartbreakingly handsome. _He'll be stunning when he's twenty._

Tawny amber eyes regarded her with suspicion, wariness, and a little anger. She'd seen eyes like that before, in children who'd seen things no child ought to. Behind the anger was doubtless a sizable lump of fear -- terror, even.

Though mostly, right now, he just looked pissed off. He wouldn't acknowledge the fear unless forced to.

"So you've never even _heard _of my country," he repeated, for the umpteenth time in the last hour.

"I'm afraid not." Not that she doubted him, exactly, though she supposed that the kid could be making it all up. The mess he'd made of the alley argued for the truth of his story -- at least, what little stor they'd managed to get out of him. He'd explained he'd been casting an alchemic spell -- he made a clear distinction between alchemy and magic that Elisa didn't begin to grasp -- and had ended up here in the aftermath.

She had a call in to Owen, who might have a better idea than she did on where the kid was from. If Owen talked, and if the price wasn't too high for the information.

"So how did your arm and leg get hurt?" she asked.

"Made a mistake." Three words. A sullen look.

_Yeah,_ Elisa figured, _kid's terrified._

"Did somebody hurt you?"

"Did it to myself." Four more sullen words.

Her this-might-be-a-case-of-abuse instincts went off. She didn't deal with domestic violence much, these days, but every cop saw some. "How do you hurt your leg and arm that badly by yourself? You can't even move them."

Silently, he pushed the sleeve of his coat up, exposing a gleaming metal wrist.

Elisa froze in place for half a heartbeat, too many memories of various homicidal robots surfacing to allow for any reaction but panic.

_He's human_, she told herself, then added mentally, because she knew better than to make assumptions about anyone based on appearances, _or close enough_. _He's not a robot._

He'd been shivering when she'd finally talked him out of the basement. Robots didn't shiver.

"That's ... an artificial limb?" She guessed.

"Broken." One word.

She sighed, ran a hand over her face, and said, "Look -- Ed -- I know you're not really happy to be here. I suspect by your reactions that you've been through hell ..."

"... you have _no _idea ..." he murmured.

"But sitting there sulking isn't helping matters. Are you going to talk to me so we can figure out how to get you home to your parents or are you going to sit in my office forever?"

"I'm not sulking and I don't have any parents. My mom died when I was ten."

That was the longest string of words she'd managed to get out of him. He met her eyes with a level golden glare.

"I'm sorry," she said, meaning it. "Who looks after you?"

Blank look. "No one."

"That must be pretty lonely." Elisa offered. _Orphan. But I think there's more here, much more, that he's not saying._

"I've got my little brother. I look after him." _That _was said with the first emotions she'd seen out of him that weren't varying degrees of hostile. He sounded ... worried and fond all at once. "He's fourteen. I ... I want to get back to him."

"I've got a baby sister," Elisa volunteered. "And an older brother. It would tear me apart if anything happened to them."

He continued, in a slightly thoughtful tone of voice, "I've got friends in Risembool. Winry and her grandmother. They fix my automail when it breaks. They're home, I guess."

"Automail -- your arm and leg?" Elisa guessed. "How did it break?"

A one-shouldered shrug was her only response, and a defiant look. He wasn't going to give her any information easily.

Elisa sighed. "Well, until we figure out how to get your home, I _may _have a friend who can fix it for you."

_That _got his interest. "It's some pretty complicated machinery," he said, warily. But his eyes showed sudden hope. The kid had a remarkably expressive face; she wondered idly what he would look like if he actually smiled for once.

"Yeah, well, Lexington's one of the best engineers I know. If he can't fix you up, nobody can."

_What the hell_, she thought, with a mental shrug. The clan wasn't even a secret these days, and her relationship to them was widely known. Introducing the kid to the guys couldn't hurt, and maybe they'd have some idea on how to send him home.

"What's the exchange?"

"Huh?" _Exchange -- does he expect to have to pay? _Elisa thought, a little incredulously.

"What do I need to exchange for his help?" The boy had a rather condescending tone in his voice.

Elisa blinked at him. "Nothing." She glanced at the window, saw that the sky was rapidly growing light, and sighed. "But it will have to wait until tonight."

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	2. Chapter 2

-1Magic and Alchemy

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Chapter 2

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Screams woke Elisa.

She rolled out of bed, fumbled the combination lock off the trigger of her gun, and winced when the boy screamed in terror again. Fourteen years with the clan had taught her extreme caution; she snagged up an iron poker from beside her bed and with poker in one hand and gun in the other, she shouldered the bedroom door open.

It was well past noon; bright sunlight streamed through the loft's windows. They'd gone to bed just after dawn. The kid had fallen asleep in her car and again over her attempts to feed him a morning 'dinner.' He'd been utterly exhausted -- so tired, emotionally and physically, that the fear in his eyes had been overruled by his body's need for sleep.

He was still sleeping, she realized, if sitting up and screaming in a nightmare could be considered _sleeping_.

"Ed." She said, sharply, from a safe distance.

Another scream. He had his eyes screwed tight shut, and his fists balled. "MOMMMMMMMY! It wasn't you! I didn't kill you!"

"Ed. Ed, wake up."

She moved closer, warily -- she hadn't seen him use magic (or alchemy, as he'd insisted it was called) yet but Bluestone swore he was major league. _Up there with Oberon, Elisa. He melted stone and made it flow like water_. Caution seemed called for.

"Mommy!" He panted, "ALPHONSE! NO! NO! No, I'll save you ..."

"Ed!" Very cautiously, she put a hand on his shoulder. "Ed, wake up."

"Maes! No Maes! Don't die, Maes!"

Suddenly he jerked, lunged awake and away from her all in one motion. Those amber eyes blinked frantically, and he looked around wildly. One hand made a flapping motion in the air; his artificial arm remained motionless.

"Easy, Ed," Elisa said, soothingly. "You're okay."

He stared at her without comprehension for a moment, then tucked his good leg to his chest and said, "Bad dreams."

"Sounds like it."

He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand; she realized he'd been crying in his dream. Sympathetically, Elisa said, "You lost some family, didn't you?"

He wordlessly nodded.

"I have nightmares too, sometimes." Elisa said, quietly. "It's never easy losing people you love to violence."

He said nothing, though his eyes seemed to be screaming _"What do you know_!"

These days, Elisa knew all too well about losing coworkers, friends, and family.

"You want to try to sleep some more?"

"I wish I could avoid sleep for the rest of my life," Ed said, somewhat sourly. "Sorry about waking you."

_From that comment I'm going to infer that he gets frequent nightmares. Poor kid. _Elisa said, "It's okay. It was almost time to get up anyway. You hungry?"

He eyed her with interest -- she realized, belatedly, that she had the poker tucked under her arm and the gun still in one hand, finger resting against the trigger guard, muzzle pointed at the ceiling. With knowledge that no boy his age should have, he jerked his chin at the gun and said, "Were you expecting trouble?"

She glanced at the gun, then set the poker down. "Possibly."

"Maybe you should tell me what trouble you're expecting," Ed said, with a sour expression on his face. "I'd rather hate to be surprised."

"Uh." Elisa's brain went _splut_ for a second at the kid's suggestion. _Shit. That is actually a _good _suggestion. He doesn't know anything about this world and experience tells me that anyone with power of his level is _going _to meet up with some of this world's bad guys eventually. God forbid Demona hear of him._

Except -- he was sixteen at best. A kid. Her instincts were telling her to protect him from the harsh truths.

_This is a kid who wakes up screaming 'I didn't kill you mommy!' and who has the eyes of battle-hardened warrior. And who uses thermonuclear level magic. He knows damn well there's bad crap in the world; he just wants to know what the particular hazards are in this world._

She couldn't help but think, _Smart kid. He's a survivor._

"I'll fill you in tonight, when you meet the clan," she paused, and added, "do they have ... nonhuman creatures ... in Amestris?"

"You mean like chimeras?"

_Chimeras. Human-animal hybrids in mythology. _Elisa blinked. "Ah, do you have creatures that are like that in your home world?"

"Yeah. They're abominations," he shuddered. "The alchemy to create them -- it's a taboo."

"Okay. Well, _my _friends that you're going to meet tonight are _not _chimeras but they are not human, either. I just want to make sure that you're not surprised when you meet them. They can be a bit scary and some people think they're monsters when they first see them." She paused, considered that statement, and added, "Actually, we _do _have chimeras too ..."

"I've _seen _scary." Ed snorted, interrupting her. "You're telling me that you don't want me to judge them on appearance. That I can do. I prefer judging people on their actions."

_Smart, smart kid. _Elisa blinked at this statement. As wary and scared as he was, she hadn't actually been expecting that sort of a comment from him. She'd been expecting terror and paranoia, to tell the truth.

He ran a hand over his sleep-mussed hair, eyed her for a moment, then said, "Care if I take a shower?"

"Bathroom's yours. I'm afraid the only shampoo is girly, though." She shrugged apologetically. "I'm not used to having guests, really."

Ed smiled, the first actual smile she'd seen out of him -- though it was a wan, tired smile that didn't actually meet his eyes. "Listen, Elisa, I've spent the last few years in the middle of a war. Perfumed shampoo is _not _a problem as long as it gets the dirt out."

With effort, and a rather large amount of dignity, he heaved himself to his feet and hopped along the couch, then the wall, to her bathroom and disappeared inside.

-----------------

"Remember what I said about them being friends," Elisa said, sounding somewhat nervous, as she led the way onto an elevator. Ed glanced at her, wondering if she thought he was _stupid_. He'd been warned to expect nonhumans and that they might be scary. He wasn't supposed to hit them with any alchemy except in actual self defense. Check. He got that.

Besides, one of them -- Lexington -- was supposed to be able to fix his automail.

Ed hopped after her, the hopping somewhat easier now that she'd scrounged up a crutch for him. It was slow going -- but he refused to be carried like a child. Her partner, Bluestone, had offered and he'd shot that idea down in a hurry. Bluestone, hands in his pockets, was walking slowly after him.

"Really, remember they're friends. You're going to see some stuff you've lively never seen before in a few moments." Bluestone said, earnestly.

_Try me_, Ed thought, with the blackest of humor.

The man had a black eye, but had said nothing about the fight the night before. He _had _filled Ed in on a rather elaborate conspiracy theory involving aliens, a secret society, and the paper money this country used for currency on the drive over from Elisa's apartment. Elisa had caught his eye halfway through Bluestone's long discourse and rolled her eyes with great emphasis -- apparently, she didn't put much weight on her partner's theories.

The clan -- her friends -- lived at the very top of the building.

Ed leaned against the elevator railing as it rose rapidly upwards, wobbling a bit. His knee and hip were aching from the effort of standing on one leg.

"You okay, kid?" Bluestone asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Who are you calling _shorter than grass in the desert_?" He jerked free of the touch. He would have elaborated on the _short _inference, but the elevator doors opened at that point.

They were in the castle. It _was _a castle, Elisa had said -- transported stone by stone from across an ocean by a billionaire. (Bluestone had muttered, sotto voice, _evil_, just before she'd said "billionaire" and Elisa had snorted a rather sarcastic sounding laugh and said, "Well, nobody's perfect.")

The great hall of the castle was empty; streams of light from the setting sun shone horizontally in.

"They're outside," Elisa said, "We're a few minutes early, but there were a few things I wanted to tell you ..."

At that instant, gunfire rattled outside -- a machine gun, he thought. Then there was the unmistakable wail of incoming artillery -- Ed had heard that sound enough times that ducking was a spinal reflex. He hit the deck behind a heavy couch, knowing there was no time to even transmute some protection. The two cops remained standing as a thunderous explosion rattled the building.

They staggered, exchanged twin looks of incredulous disbelief, then, as Edward tried to scramble to his feet, Elisa shoved him back down and yelled, "STAY HERE!" She bolted for the doorway with her gun already drawn. Bluestone was hot on her heels.

"Shit!" He levered himself back to his feet and followed as fast as he could, which, even with the crutch, wasn't nearly fast enough.

"STOP!" Elisa bellowed, from outside, as another explosion blew. He heard her desperate wail, "GOLIATH! NO! DON'T!"

Profuse swearing, from Bluestone.

Another explosion.

Single sharp reports from a handgun.

"NO!!!!!!!!!!" Elisa's wail sounded utterly desperate. He heard the incoming whine of another mortar, and Elisa and Bluestone dove through the doorway as Ed flattened himself to the ground. A second explosion tore through the building.

_Just how well attached is this castle to the skyscraper beneath it? _Edward worried, as the building swayed and shuddered for a good long moment after the thunderous sound had died away.

"This thing might collapse!" Elisa shouted, apparently thinking along similar lines. He was more worried about the castle falling _off _the skyscraper than the building itself going down.

The attack stopped as quickly as it had started.

Gravel trickled to the floor from high above, a steady rattle of small pebbles. The building groaned. Hot metal ticked. Somewhere, a siren wailed.

"Generally speaking," he growled at Elisa and Bluestone, "Smart people do _not _try to keep the state alchemist from the battle. Generally speaking, they want me AT the battle. I could have done a hell of a lot more out there with my bare hands than _you _could have with that thing." He glared at Elisa's handgun, which she was still holding.

Elisa said, in a low voice, in a tone that made him look hard at her -- because it was a tone of utter and absolute horror, "Goliath ..."

"It was an assassination, Elisa." Bluestone's voice held a note similar. "DAMN it."

Elisa suddenly leaped to her feet and ran back outside, into a courtyard. Bluestone shouted, "Elisa! Wait!"

He started to follow. Edward snapped, "Take me!"

Being carried seemed the most expedient way to get to the scene of the fight. Hopping was _slow_.

Bluestone scooped him up and lumbered after Elisa, who had slid to a halt in the middle of a courtyard, next to a pile of rubble. Her face was blank. She stood, staring down at the bits and pieces -- bits and pieces of a statue, one of several tangled in amid the stone blocks of a fallen wall. They were shattered.

"Elisa, I'm _sorry_." Bluestone set Edward down -- he had the sudden sense that he'd been simply _forgotten_. He balanced against what was left of a bullet-scarred planter. The man walked up to his partner with heavy, slow steps. "Elisa?"

Elisa sank to her knees beside the statue. She still looked ... blank. Her eyes were very distant. She was shaking, Ed realized, but there wasn't any expression at all on her face. She tucked her knees to her chest and stared at the pile of broken stone.

"Elisa?" Bluestone crouched beside her. "I'm _sorry_."

_She must have some sort of strong sentimental attachment to the statues_, Edward realized. _Odd. Maybe religious significance or something?_

He realized he didn't know a damn thing about these people. Didn't have a clue who attacked the castle much less who the good guys or the bad guys were -- though his money was on Elisa and Bluestone being on the side of the light. _Damn, I need more information about the situation_.

Well, statues he could fix, anyway. He picked the head of one up off the ground by his feet -- a beaked face. The stone was warm in his hands. It would be simple to put them back together.

The look on Elisa's face was breaking his heart. He'd seen similar expressions on the faces of survivors of war. Hysterical grief would come later. Bluestone didn't look much better; he had tears streaming down his face.

Edward clapped his hands, slammed them against the ground, summoned alchemic energy, and watched with a grin as the bits and pieces of the statues rose from the ground and melded back together. Easy. Piece of cake. He _felt _how they should be and put everything back the way it was.

"No!" A warning voice, unfamiliar, behind him. "Don't! Wait! There's something you don't understand ..."

The familiar green and gold of alchemic magic suddenly went _wrong_.

SHIT!

He felt the soul-searing rush of _wrong_ power as the Gate of Truth rose before him. The energy flared red and terrible. The gate opened started to creak open.

_What did I do? _He thought in wild confusion.

He was being pulled in. Confusion turned to terror. Somehow, someway, he'd done a transmutation on a living being, brought something back from the dead ... souls howled around him ... tearing at his skin.

"NO!"

Power that wasn't Alchemy wailed around him. Wild, feral, untamed, ruled by no laws he understood or could identify. Immensely strong.

"Begone ye gate, you'll not open today and take this child away!" A voice screamed at the portal.

The magic howled, mixing and swirling with the alchemy. _Magic. That's not Alchemy_.

He knew instinctively that this was something else, something other. It surrounded him, pulled him back, held him safe. The gate closed.

Silence.

Sobbing, from Elisa.

He blinked, amazed to be still alive. "What in the hell caused that?"

"What in the hell _was _that?" A voice echoed him.

He looked up to see a man with dark hair and a goatee frowning at him, intensely. Past the man, sitting on the ground, was a figure about his size -- a man with long blond hair and pointy ears. Chimera? Maybe. The man met his eyes, shook his head, and said, "Now _that _was a rush. Let's do it again why don't we?"

"Owen, are you okay?" The man turned back to the pointy-eared guy.

Owen stood up -- then abruptly _melted _into a taller figure, with short blond hair and thick glasses. The dark haired man didn't seem at all surprised by this. Edward _twitched. _Homunculi!

The homunculi said, "I'll survive. That was rather intense. Also, I think the folks on the other side of that gate are in for a surprise."

"What ... I don't understand why the gate opened." _Homunculi, shit, shit, shit ... that's a homunculi, he shapeshifted ... _

"It's generally considered unwise to try to bring back the dead using alchemy," Owen said, scowling at him. "You're terribly powerful not to know that. Somebody neglected your training."

"Dead?" He said. "But ..." He paused, stung beyond measure, switched gears, and snarled, "And believe me, I know far more than I ever want to about human transmutations! I wasn't transmuting humans! I'm not that stupid!"

"Not human, but close enough." Owen was utterly unruffled by Edward's display of temper. He pointed behind Edward.

He twisted around to see the dying light of the sun touching the statues he'd just resurrected. _Resurrected _seemed to be the operative word, because as the sun slid below the horizon the statues ... moved.

Exploded, shards of stone spraying in all directions.

Roared, loudly.

Eyes glowed.

Wings flexed.

Claws.

Fangs.

Tails.

Monsters.

He watched, too stunned to do anything else, as the statues came to life.

_Well, that explains a few things_, he thought, with absolute astonishment. His foot slid out from underneath him and he hit the ground with a painful thump. _They just transmuted from stone to flesh. That ... shouldn't be possible._

There were seven of them, ranging in size from not much taller than Ed to a muscle-bound hulk who would have made the Strong Arm Alchemist look like a ninety-eight pound weakling. It was the latter creature that Elisa embraced, arms going around his neck. She was crying now; he could hear the sobs.

"Elisa? What happened?" The creature had a strong voice, warm, resonant. Edward blinked in surprise at that voice; it was calm, concerned, and clearly articulate. Not the voice of a monster at all.

She buried her face in his neck, clearly upset beyond words. Goliath wrapped his arms and wings around her, lifting her off the ground, and just held her. Edward held his _breath_, shocked at the casual intimacy with a creature that had claws and fangs like that.

Goliath murmured, "What has created the upset here?"

"Uh. You were attacked. Dead. Smashed." Bluestone spoke up. There was an unspoken _sir _in his words.

"Smashed?" One of the other gargoyles said. Shorter, but not _short _except in comparison to Goliath. Brick colored skin, and the beaked head that Edward had been holding a moment ago.

"I don't feel smashed!" That came from one almost as big as Goliath.

Goliath blinked. Set Elisa down. He asked Elisa, "Is this true?"

"Yes, sir," That was Owen, who spoke when Elisa remained in stunned silence. Owen's "sir" definitely wasn't unspoken, and Edward wondered if it was an actual military address or just polite speech. There was a _lot _he needed to learn here. Owen continued, with a nod in Edward's direction, "But the young alchemist here reacted very quickly and put your bodies back together, before your souls could cross over. The result was ... well, it was fortunate _I _was here, because that is not generally an advised use of alchemy. Magic handles such matters much better."

Goaded, Edward snapped, "I didn't know they were alive or I wouldn't have done it."

Elisa said, with a low laugh that spoke incredible, disbelieving relief more than anything else, "Well, I'm for damn sure glad you did."

Goliath growled, "Sorcery."

"Alchemy, actually. It's a science from another world, akin yet different to our own. And it has been awhile since I've seen an alchemist on this side." Owen adjusted his glasses. "You're a long way from home, young man."

_The homunculi knows about my world. I must get it alone and wring some information out of it, _Ed thought, savagely.

"Naught but trouble comes from magic." Goliath stepped closer to Edward. He loomed, for a second, then offered Edward a hand up.

"Well, then, it's a good thing alchemy isn't magic." Edward said, taking the gargoyle's hand. His fingers were warm, dry, and callused. Goliath pulled him to his feet easily. It was a casual courtesy, but one that he found unexpectedly set him at ease. These creatures were not human, but they were clearly people.

"You're injured." Goliath had noted Edward's difficulty in standing.

"Not technically," Ed sighed. He leaned his hip against the planter again, reached over, lifted his damaged right arm up and pulled his sleeve back, displaying the metal. "I kinda need a mechanic."

"You're a _robot_!" That came from the shortest of the gargoyles, who hurried closer for a better look. "Cool!"

"I'm not a robot." Ed pushed his sleeve back into place.

"He's a cyborg. And maybe a Child of Oberon," Bluestone offered, helpfully.

"Bluestone," Elisa said, with what sounded like patience sorely tested to the limit, "Cyborgs and Children of Oberon are mutually exclusive concepts. Think about it. He's human. -- Sorry, Ed."

The dark haired man said, in a tone of amusement, "Elisa? Goliath? You guys might want to scram. I think your colleagues will be showing up soon to investigate the attack and it would probably be expedient for the clan to be elsewhere."

"Sir, we may want to make it look as if they _were _killed for the police report," Owen suggested. "At least until we know who the attackers were."

_Smart homunculi_, Edward thought, and decided not to kill him for the moment, until he knew more. And, _Homunculi using magic. Now that's something you don't encounter on a regular basis back home. _

"I can take care of that," Edward volunteered, quickly grasping what they had in mind. If the ... assassins ... had official connections, it would probably be wise to make sure said assassins thought they'd succeeded the first time to prevent a repeat attempt. "Do you just need some stone shards that look like them?"

"Please." Owen nodded. "If you would do the honors, that would be useful."

Ed quickly transmuted some of the non-statuary rubble into bits and pieces of gargoyle statues, scattered artistically around the courtyard.

"Okay, that's very cool," the brick-red gargoyle with a beaked face said. He bent over and picked up a head much like his own. "But creepy!"

The only female shuddered delicately. "Looks like a graveyard, now. Let's get out of here."

Elisa turned to the dark-haired man, "Xanatos, we'll go to the Labryinth. Can you handle the media?"

"Easily." Xanatos said. "I'll let them bring cameras up. This should make prime time news."

"Undoubtedly."

"Do we tell the cops the truth?" One of the gargoyles -- the red one with the white hair -- said.

Elisa shook her head, "No, Brooklyn. Not until we know more about where the attack came from. I hate to say it, but I don't trust everyone on the force to keep things quiet about you guys, uh, surviving. Umm, Bluestone, you want to stay behind and tell _Maria _what really happened and ask her to keep a lid on it for now?"

"Yeah. I'll meet you at your apartment in the morning."

It wasn't until the brick red gargoyle -- Brooklyn -- moved towards him with wings lifting off his shoulders that Edward realized that the wings were actually functional and they intended to _fly _away. Or at least glide; he did a quick calculation of mass to surface area in his head and came up with the conclusion that flapping flight was unlikely but they could definitely ride thermals.

"Oh no," Ed would have backed away if he had the mobility to do so. "You've got to be kidding me."

Brooklyn stopped and frowned at him. "You _can _trust us. You saved our lives."

"No way! This is crazy!" Edward protested.

"Look, you can't weigh anything. I can carry you, easy. You're just a little guy ..." Brooklyn said, in a tone of voice that was probably supposed to be reassuring.

"Who are you calling little ...!"

"Little _and _chicken," came from the smallest, bald, gargoyle, cutting Edward's rant off neatly. And then he clucked like a chicken.

Fuming, Edward snapped, "Fine. Carry me. But if you drop me, I'm transmuting you into a lawn gnome."

---------------------


	3. Chapter 3

-1Chapter 3

--------------

Author's note: Lexington's sexual orientation is quasi-canon on Gargoyles. Nothing was ever stated, or even implied, on the show -- it's a Disney show, after all -- but Greg Weisman, the series creator, has said a few things here and there about it.

This is NOT a slash story -- I'm saying that because I know fen and I know where everyone's mind just went. Please stick with me; I'm going with a bit of a different theme than you usually see in fanfic. And it's a theme that will develop over several chapters. :-)

-------------

"So these are powered by alchemy?" The short gargoyle -- Lexington -- said, poking at Ed's automail leg with a screwdriver. "I know precisely nothing about alchemy."

"I can't do the fine adjustments myself and I'd rather not try to take it off myself. Hurts to damn much and I can't get it off quickly all on my own." Ed winced as Lexington's screwdriver bumped a circuit that zapped a nerve. Ed recoiled. "Like that! Owe!"

"Sorry about that," Lexington said, truly looking apologetic. "If I get these off you, can you fix the alchemic bits that are broken? I can easily repair the rest of it, and reattach things, I suppose."

"Yeah. The arrays will just need to be redrawn. Do you have some ink or something that I could use?"

"Permanent marker work?" Lexington reached into a box of tools at his feet and handed the pen to Edward. "Or do you need special supplies?"

"This should work. Nice thing about alchemy is if I can get supplies close to what I need, I can make 'em work the hard way if necessary ..." Edward uncapped it and made a face at the bad odor. "It's waterproof? I need to be able to take showers and stuff."

"Yeah."

"Cool. You guys have some pretty neat inventions, actually." Ed hadn't missed the number of interesting gadgets that this world seemed to possess. From wallet-sized wireless telephones to the "television" he'd briefly glimpsed in Elisa's apartment, it was obvious that this world was far more advanced than his own in some ways. However, they had almost no use of alchemy -- the word actually had a slightly different meaning here.

"Tell me about it." Lexington unscrewed another plate from Ed's automail leg. "When I woke up in this world, I think I spent the first two years going, "Wow! Cool!"

"Woke up?" Ed prompted, curious.

"We spent a thousand years frozen in stone because of a spell," Lexington explained. "We're from the past. Xanatos woke us up -- we've been here fourteen years this coming fall."

Lex paused, sighed, and said, "Most of my clan died back then. You've met everyone that survived that massacre, plus Angela -- there were some eggs that hatched later, Angela's from them. The rest of the eggs are on Avalon except for a few people scattered here and there who've left since."

"I'm sorry." Edward said, meaning it. The pain in the gargoyle's voice was understated, but very obviously there. You never quite got over losing family.

"Is it going to hurt when I take this leg off?" Lexington asked.

"Yes. Do it quickly, please," Edward said, gritting his teeth against the familiar pain.

Lex flipped several latches in rapid succession and the leg popped off. Edward groaned and collapsed back onto Elisa's brother's bed -- her brother wasn't home, but they'd appropriated his bedroom for the repairs.

"You okay?" Elisa stuck her head through the low stone doorway.

"I'm so wonderful that I'm going to jump up and dance," Edward snapped.

Lexington chuckled, to Ed's surprise, and said, "Lends a whole new meaning to 'sock hop' ..."

_Okay, did he just _tease _me? _Ed stared at the gargoyle in dumbfounded surprise, too startled to think of a comeback. Sense of humor? So not expected from a creature that looked like he was straight out of a moderately bad nightmare.

Lexington met his eyes, grinned toothily, and said, "You might save the dancing about until after we're _done _here."

He was still trying to come up with a suitable retort when Lexington handed him the leg's power plant -- a complicated device covered with alchemic symbols and consisting of intricate gears and sprockets and springs. "You fix this; I'll get the rest."

As he'd suspected, he discovered several of the tiny arrays in the mechanism were toasted. He redrew them with the black marker and ran a few basic tests with little surges of alchemic power to make sure things were working right.

"You jammed a few gears in the knee here, too," Lexington said, applying a wrench to the joint with apparent expertise. The gargoyle flexed the knee joint, then the ankles and toes, and said with appreciation, "You know, this is really sturdy for the degree of finesse required."

"Winry's the best." Edward paused, and found himself grinning with fond memories. "Even if she throws wrenches at me whenever I come home broken."

"Better be careful not to break it here," Lexington warned, "I can probably fabricate a duplicate with enough time, but you'll be the Peg Leg Alchemist until I do."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Edward sighed and gave Lexington another sharp look. _Smart. And a sarcastic sense of humor. Not exactly what I was expecting from him when I first saw him. Really, I should know better at this point to judge people based on appearances. _

It took surprisingly little time to fix both his arm and his leg, working together, but putting them back _on _was the usual ordeal of searing agony. He couldn't help a muffled scream when the leg connected.

"You okay, man?" Lexington said, looking very worried. The gargoyle studied his expression, then frowned, obviously not liking what he was seeing on Ed's face.

When he could talk, Edward said, "No. But I'll survive."

He was surprised again when the gargoyle squeezed his good shoulder in a friendly fashion, and said, "I'll be out in the library -- it's down the hall -- when you're ready to get up."

---------------------

Elisa was working on her laptop when Lexington entered the labyrinth's fairly sizable library. She glanced up and asked, "How is he?"

Lexington grimaced, remembering the muffled scream the kid had issued when he'd attached his leg. "In a lot of pain. I think perhaps more ways than one."

Elisa nodded. "What do you make of him, Lex?"

Lexington gave her a bit of a surprised look, not exactly used to Elisa asking _his _opinion on anything except perhaps for subjects of a mechanical nature. He was growing up, and he'd noticed she wasn't the only one who had started doing little things like that -- but still, it always came as a surprise when someone treated him as an adult and not a kid.

Dryly, he said, "He's rather good looking."

Elisa laughed. He was glad to see her laugh; she'd been rather silent on the flight over -- and Elisa, silent, was not a good thing. "Besides that, doofus."

Lexington shrugged. "He's still looking at me like he expects me to bite, but I'm not sure how much of that is the fact that I'm scary to him and how much of that is the fact that he's a scared teenager."

"You picked that up too, hmm? Can't say as I blame him for being wary, given he's kind of a long way from home, but ..." Elisa let the thought trail off. "For what it's worth, he said something to me about chimeras being monsters on his world. He may have had some bad experiences with humanoid creatures. Be aware of that."

"He doesn't say much about his past, does he?" Lex sat down on the library couch and ran a hand over his bald head. "Guess I know the feeling."

"I've only gotten a few things out of him. He's an orphan, and he's got a brother he's really worried about. Something about a war, and he snapped something at me about expecting to be in the middle of the fight, so I'm thinking he was an active participant in said war."

Lexington sighed. "You should see the scars on his chest, Elisa. Not all of them are from the accident that took his arm and leg. Some of them are a lot more recent, and from more than one incident."

Elisa nodded. "Do me a favor, Lex, will you?"

"Sure."

"He needs a friend. Make an attempt to get through to him, will you?"

"Oh, sure." Lexington leaned back against the couch. "You don't even have to ask me, there. Guy's smart, he'll be fun to talk to. He's got a _brain_."

"Thanks." Elisa grinned at him. "And, Lex?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful."

---------------------

It was much later when Edward got up -- he'd fallen asleep in the bed; he was so _tired_.

A nebulous bad dream involving _falling _had woken him with a start. He'd sat up, remembered where he was -- and then it felt wonderful to be able to _stand _up easily a minute later.

The Labryinth was underground -- Brooklyn had explained, briefly, that this world's version of chimeras, _mutates_, lived here. He'd met one woman, Maggie -- a tall creature with wings, apparently combined with cat and something else. Bat, maybe, or even with a gargoyle. The others were out _patrolling_, something they apparently did on a nightly basis. Maggie had said the rest of her family would be back at dawn.

There was a story there, but one nobody had told him yet. Maybe he'd ask Lexington.

The library was down a concrete corridor and up a narrow staircase. The lights were dimmed inside, and the only person who seemed to be present was Lexington. The gargoyle was hunched over before a glowing "television." He was tapping rapidly on a low panel with raised keys that bore a vague resemblance to a typewriter.

Ed cleared his throat, and the gargoyle looked up. Grinned. "Hey Ed. You woke up, finally."

"How long was I asleep?"

"Three or four hours." The gargoyle glanced at his watch.

"What are you doing?" Ed asked, curiously.

"Sending an e-mail to Xanatos. He wanted to know how you were doing."

"... e-mail?" _And is Xanatos a homunculi too? _

_For that matter, did I create homunculi when I opened that gate? I'm not sure precisely how that works._

"Oh, right. Elisa said your world wasn't as advanced as this one." Lexington grinned broader. "You seem like a bit of a geek; you're going to _love _it here."

"What's a ... geek?" He didn't even know if he should be offended or complimented by the term. Was it a short joke?

"A brain. Intelligent, you know, curious."

"Oh. Yes." Ed felt a bit of a smile touch his lips, to his surprise. He hadn't been smiling much for weeks. He guessed the term was a compliment. "I've been called a prodigy in my own world."

"Yeah, I figured as much." Lexington waved at the computer. "Anyway, an e-mail is a message sent electronically."

"Like a telegraph." Edward was eying the machine in front of him with interest. Some sort of alchemy -- or other science -- beyond anything he understood made the screen glow with letters and images. They were as clear as a photograph.

"Something like that. This is a computer."

"Not a television?" The box in Elisa's apartment had been called a _television_; it had showed moving pictures that were in full color and brilliant. He'd briefly caught the _news _-- the visual version of a newspaper. The talk had been mostly about politics and crime.

"A television shows movies and stuff. Computers are interactive. Here, let me send this ..." Lexington made several fast keystrokes and the letter he'd been writing disappeared from the screen. Then he stood up, gestured at the chair, and said, "Have a seat. You're going to love this ..."

-------------


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

---------------------

Author's Notes:

_I know in the canon universe, Alphonse came back ten years old. I'm going a bit AU here at the very end of the series and saying he came back from the Gate fifteen years old -- which makes as much sense as not. (Wrath aged in the Gate. Why didn't Alphonse?)_

_I needed him older for this story to work, and with his memory intact. So, he's fifteen ultimately because I said so. _

_Since someone complained, I'll insert a warning for language in this. There be four letter words ahead. If you think that seeing a four letter word on the computer screen will turn your brain to jello, you probably want to stop now. (And, um, why are people reading fanfic if they're worried about a four letter word to begin with? Yeesh. There are far worse things on this site than strong language used by soldiers. Get over it already. And I thought I was the prude ... end of rant. And warning.)_

_Regarding Gargoyles, for the FMA fans -- I feel old now. Once upon a time, Gargoyles would have needed no introduction to animation fans ... it really has been more than a decade, hasn't it?  
_

_I've described FMA as the "best show since Gargoyles." Honestly, they're on about the same level of quality and are likely to appeal to the same people. Gargoyles has extensive episode continuity (the episodes need to be watched in order much like FMA), rich characterization, a fantastic score, and some reasonably decent animation -- many of the animation studios were Japanese, though the feel of the show is definitely American 90's. Much like FMA, actions have consequences on Gargoyles, and problems are not always neatly tied up with a bow and happily-ever-after at the end. Gargoyles is probably _better _at character development of villains but does suffer in spots from being an American show with American censors._

_Gargoyles airs on Toon Disney periodically, usually at an unGodly hour -- I don't know if it's airing now. You can also get some, but not all, eps on DVD. And yes, this is a Disney show, though it's unlike anything Disney has ever done before or since in a series.  
_

----------------------

General Roy Mustang opened his eye, lifted his head from the infirmary bed, and said, "Fullmetal?"

"No."

Roy blinked at the image of the teenage boy before him, vision blurry from sleep, then propped himself up on one elbow for a better look after realizing the boy's eyes were a sort of brownish grey and his hair more of a honey color than spun gold. He was also a few inches taller than Ed. That hair was braided the same way, however, and the kid had Ed's distinctive red coat folded over his arm, though he was wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt, not all black.

No automail.

And he was carrying Ed's coat. What happened to Edward Elric?

"Where's Ed?" Roy said, with a growing sense of deep fear. He'd asked Hawkeye about the young alchemist earlier; she'd been ... evasive. _He hasn't filed a report yet, sir, so I don't know if he was hurt._

Later, he would blame the drugs dripping into his arm from the glass bottle hanging above his head. But he didn't actually clue into _who _this kid was, even when it really should have been obvious, until the teen said, "General Mustang, he ... I ... he ... Brother brought me back. My body, my soul, from the gate. But he's gone now. I need to find him. I'm going to do it."

Roy closed his eyes, and whispered, "You're Al."

After a moment Al said quietly, "I am."

"Fuck." _The bastard went and did it. He brought Al back. And the exchange was his life, most likely, except I can't believe that because it's Ed and Ed's too smart for that. Too good at pulling a rabbit out of the hat at the last minute. He's alive, I know it._

"I'm going to get him back, sir." The boy sounded determined. It was a very familiar note in his voice, actually.

_He sounds like his brother when he says that. _

"Like hell you're joining the military," Roy said, opening his one eye again. "I won't sanction it. In fact, I'll fight it. I'm not letting _both _of you throw your lives away."

"I didn't intend to," Al said, calmly. "But I could use access to some restricted books, if you please, sir. You can authorize it."

Roy considered refusing, either on general principles or because turning an Elric -- even the saner half of the Elric brothers, the one who said _please _and _thank you _-- loose with restricted books sounded more than a little dangerous.

"If I say no?"

"Then I'll get the information some other way. He's alive, sir. I'm certain of it. I'm going to get him back."

_Getting the information some other way_ could very well turn out to be more of a disaster than just giving the kid the books he wanted. Mustang had absolutely no illusions about the Elric brothers, not anymore. He'd learned about their penchant for digging up information best left unlearned the hard way.

Edward might have been the hot-tempered one (and he already missed arguing with the boy with grief that was almost physically painful) but Al was still an Elric -- and neither boy was exactly rational when it came to the subject of his brother's welfare.

Alphonse added, quietly, in a tone of voice that seemed to come from a much older man, not a fourteen year old boy carrying his older brother's red coat and braiding his hair in the exact same fashion as said elder brother, "General Mustang, I know sometimes Brother could be difficult. But I know you were fond of him. Will you help me? Please? If I don't get him back, nobody will. And then he'll be lost forever. If you'll give me a hand here, I can bring him back."

Mustang stared up at the IV bottle dripping morphine and saline into his vein. Afterwards, he'd blame it on the drugs. But he said, quietly, "Kid, I'll help. You can have the books, but there's a price."

"Anything, sir." By the tone in Al's voice, he quite literally meant _anything _ -- no price would have been too high. That, too, was an Elric trait.

"I'd like to work with you on this. Once I'm out of this damned hospital bed, I want to help, Alphonse. We'll do this together." Roy held his breath, half expecting to be shot down -- as much as he liked both Elrics, they weren't exactly ones to trust authority or willingly accept assistance except on their own terms.

Al's grey-brown eyes were unreadable, for a moment. Then he nodded. "Okay, General. That's a fair exchange."

Mustang let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

---------------

Elisa Maza stood in the library doorway, regarding the scene with a bit of a smile.

Lex was asleep in stone in the corner, grinning and waving in the direction of the computer desk. She could imagine the scene that had led to the grin -- Lexington warning Ed about what was going to happen, and telling him he'd wake at dusk.

Dusk was hours away. It was perhaps two in the afternoon; Elisa had woken after several fitful hours sleeping at Goliath's feet in the relative safety of the Labyrinth's common room. _I came so close to losing him. Whatever else this kid is, he's a hero in my book. _

She wasn't sure if she could have born losing the clan. It hurt, even to think about it. And she literally couldn't imagine a life empty of Goliath.

Edward was also asleep, at the computer, head propped on one hand, cold coffee by his elbow, sitting up with his eyes closed. His blond braid had come undone and his hair tumbled loose down around his shoulders. A rumpled blanket on the library couch showed he'd actually slept, at least for a bit, but she wasn't sure how long. Or maybe he'd simply laid down, been unable to sleep, and gotten back up.

"Ed?" She said, quietly.

He started, amber eyes opening and blinking at her. He looked confused for a moment, then straightened up and ran his metal hand over his face. She watched that with fascination -- she'd seen prosthetics before, of course, but never ones with such a fluid range of motion.

"_Mumble,_" he said, and then reached for the coffee with the same metal hand -- she realized he was left-handed -- sipped it, made a face, and stared into the mug. _Cold and nasty and it was hot just a minute ago! _His expression said, very clearly.

"I thought you might want to move to the couch, before you fall down," Elisa said, smiling at him.

He glanced at Lexington and said in a low voice, the kind you used around someone else who was sleeping, "I slept enough." He didn't return her smile.

"Mm. Well, if you're hungry, the mutates are up and there's breakfast in the dining chamber -- down the stairs, to your left." Elisa hesitated, then added, "After you eat, we'll go out and get you a few changes of clothes -- nobody here wears anything close to your size 'cept for Lex, and I don't think you'd care much for his fashion sense. And you're going to need some things."

Ed glanced at the loin-cloth wearing statue and said, with dry amusement. "It's January. But I don't have any money that would work here, Elisa ... and I'm _not _short!"

"Don't worry about it." Elisa shrugged. She didn't bother to dignify the _not short_ protest with a response. "You can pay me with some information."

She was not unsurprised when he blinked a couple of times, then nodded quietly. "What would you like to know?"

"About your world and how you ended up here. And the dangers you might bring to us," Elisa said, levelly.

"Oh. Yeah, sure," he shrugged. "That's probably not a bad idea, actually."

----------------

The mutates creeped him out, a bit, in the same way that chimeras did. Ed tried not to stare at these friendly, polite people as he ate breakfast -- pancakes and bacon and eggs. A wholly familiar breakfast, just like home. Utterly unfamiliar, alien, surroundings, but the food was normal and that meant more than he ever would have expected. He was on his fourth stack of pancakes, to their amusement.

Derek -- or Talon, his nickname -- was a sleek humanoid black panther with wings. Maggie was smaller, a lion, and his wife. Claw was a silent tiger, apparently mute; it was Claw who'd fixed breakfast. The three of them -- and Elisa, obviously completely comfortable in their presence -- ate as they talked. Elisa and Derek were speculating on the source of the attack as they ate, and the names they mentioned made a little more sense to Ed now.

"Not Demona," Elisa shook her head. "It's not her style, and anyway, she's been silent for years."

"Big guns aren't Demona's style?" Talon said, sarcastically.

"Not that. I mean, if Demona wanted to take us out, it would be some big, convoluted plot full of pathos and angst. Simply blowing up the clan? Not likely." Elisa shrugged.

Claw waved his hands through the air -- the creature communicated with something called _Sign Language _-- and Elisa shook her head. "I don't think so, Claw. Xanatos doesn't have a reason to destroy the clan, and plenty to protect them. Much as I don't like the man either."

Ed filed _that _tidbit away for further investigation -- why did Elisa (and apparently Claw and the other two mutates, judging by their expressions) mistrust Xanatos?

He'd spent several hours on the _internet_, fumbling his way through wholly unfamiliar technology. It was like learning alchemy all over again, from the beginning -- the terminology, the whats and the hows and the whys were complete mysteries to him at the beginning.

Lexington had given him a list of useful _web sites, _a crash course on operating the _computer_,and firm instructions to call Maggie or Derek if he got stuck. "Better than a library," the gargoyle had said, "because it's interactive. At least for the kind of information you're wanting. And you'll figure it out. You're smart like I am."

_He wanted -- craved -- information about this world. About how things worked and the details of the science and magic of this strange time._

After several hours, he'd mastered the use of the _mouse _to move the _cursor _on the _screen_, and was much more comfortable with identifying _links _that could be clicked to go to other pages. He'd come to appreciate the use of a _search engine _for finding information-- despite the fact that one link had led to a page that he was reasonably sure was not only far too adult for him now, it would be far too adult for him when he was ninety.

He blushed into his pancakes at _that _memory.

The gargoyles were an open secret at best, discussed widely on the internet, but not officially acknowledged. "Officially" this world didn't have magic, but it sounded as if the common people widely believed it.

The _Demona _they were discussing was another gargoyle, but one who was evil -- he suspected there was a lot more to the story than was discussed on the internet, and some of the speculations online were likely wildly wrong, but she was apparently a potent magic user and had once been Goliath's wife -- mate?

Dangerous creature, it sounded like.

The gargoyles even had a web page all their own -- created by Lex, he suspected -- where they had fairly basic information up about their history. It amounted to not much more than biographical data, a few photographs, and some information about their physiology and a schedule of planned appearances. The (busy) _bulletin board_ on the site was overflowing with horrified messages of grief and shock at the moment; people truly believed they were dead.

Several hours, interrupted by a brief nap on the couch and a briefer nap at the desk, hadn't been nearly enough time for him to learn all he needed to. But given a few weeks, with the sort of information these people had at their fingertips, and he'd be a lot more comfortable in this world. He was confident there, at least.

_I want to go home. But I haven't a clue how to safely open the Gate in this world and make it there without dying. So I shall study until I do. _

_------------_

Roy sat up, trying to ignore the spinning of his head, and squinted one-eyed at the book that Alphonse had in his lap. Reading for any length of time left him dizzy and nauseated, but his horror at one loss too many -- _Edward, kid, you weren't supposed to die, you're not dead! _-- was driving him on. "What exactly are you looking for?"

The books weren't alchemy books. They were books on electricity, on science. The forbidden alchemy books that Roy had authorized for Al were stacked in the corner of the hospital room; Alphonse had selectively leafed through several sections, making notes on a pad of paper earlier in the day. He'd gone, "Ahah!" At one point, and had gleefully shown Roy a six hundred year old diary of a man who claimed to have sent his spirit _through _the gate and seen a world on the other side.

That the man was obviously insane to begin with, and crazier after, hadn't negated Al's enthusiasm for the evidence. There _was _a chance that Ed had survived, and Al was convinced that he had.

At Roy's insistence, Al had set up shop right in his hospital room. Roy couldn't do much else right now, but he figured he could keep an eye on Ed's brother.

Al glanced up from his book -- and it still felt strange to see the younger Elric brother as a flesh-and-blood teenager and not a hulking suit of armor. In profile, looking sideways at him, the kid was eerily familiar. "We need to get a message across the gate, I'm thinking. Because if we figure out a way to bring him back, he's going to need to open it on his end at the same time we do on ours. And alchemy doesn't work over great distances all that well."

Roy blinked. That was _obvious_, and he hadn't even thought of it. Very gently, but because he needed know, he asked, "How are you certain that he's alive?"

"Because he's Ed." Al spoke with calm, but utterly determined confidence. "We just have to figure out how to open the gate without anyone getting hurt and then an equivalent exchange to get him back from the other side. That's going to take some communication too -- so our first task has got to be to set up a way to communicate."

Roy nodded. He ran a hand over his face, wished he wasn't trying to think through a haze of pain killers, then said, "You're contemplating an arrangement like a telephone, right?" He had an inkling of how that might work, but there was one huge assumption needed for the plan to succeed.

"Equivalent Exchange," Al said, "Electricity is a _loop_. For it to work, it has to go 'round in a circle. Positive and negative, back and forth. If we send an electric charge across the void and Ed sends one back, it should work and we could communicate ... it's just science, no souls involved, so I don't even think it would be all that dangerous. We're not trying to bring back the dead here."

Roy nodded again, fully understanding. He'd studied human transmutation -- including what happened when you _tried _it -- enough to know about how critical Equivalent Exchange became when you started doing alchemy at _that _level. Not that he'd ever admit to the Elrics how close he'd come to trying what they did. And he wasn't so sure that messing around with the Gate of Truth was going to be safe, but he was more than willing to try anyway.

Because he owed them both. Because he had to _try_ until he succeeded, to make this right. However, he did see a snag in the plan.

"Al, there's one problem I see here -- and that is that Edward has to set up a, a, telephone of some sort on _his _end." Roy saw no way to communicate their plan to the other Elric brother.

Al shrugged, and said with utter confidence in his brother, "Ed's smarter than I am, General. He'll come to the same conclusion. I'm sure of it." Al's eyes gleamed. "Bet you dinner Brother had the idea before I did."

Roy nodded at the telephone by his bedside. "Do you have the arrays figured out for this?"

"Yeah, I think so." Al reached into his pocket, and pulled out an assortment of marking instruments -- most alchemists carried everything from little bottles of paint to chalk in their pockets. Roy's own pockets, when he wasn't wearing a hospital gown, generally contained similar contents.

"You. Think. So." Roy pronounced each word with distinct emphasis.

Al gave him a grey-eyed look that reminded the General rather painfully of a certain amber-eyed hero when anyone dared question his ability. "It'll work."

"Safely?" Roy prompted. He wasn't too sure of his ability to get out of the way in a hurry if something went blooey.

"Well, safe enough," Al shrugged. He paused, and added, "Brother's on the other side of the gate, but Brother's _not dead_. Who will bring him back if I can't?"

Roy snorted a laugh, suddenly. "Al?"

"Yes, General?" Al said, as he cleared everything off the table except for the telephone. He had a crayon in one hand.

"Just thinking how things would have been different if it had been Ed in the suit of armor and you as the state alchemist."

Grey eyes regarded him uncertainly, as if trying to figure out if he should be mad at Roy for the insult to Edward. Then, slowly, Al smiled, as he thought that one through and decided it _was _funny. He knew his brother better than anyone. "Perhaps. Though I'm not so sure being a suit of armor would have slowed him down much."

This, Roy realized, was probably very true. He laughed -- a laugh that turned into a pained cough. "Never slowed you down much either."

Silence, from the boy. Apparently, he disagreed with that statement. After one more look, this one as veiled and wary as anything he'd ever seen out of Ed, Alphonse started drawing an array on the table, around the telephone. He drew more arrays on the phone itself and on the handset itself, then pulled the cord out of base of the phone so it wasn't connected to the line anymore.

Then, with a soft sigh, he pressed his fingers to the array on the table, closed his eyes, and concentrated. The lines flared with the scary red light of the Gate, and the hair on the back of Roy's neck stood on end. Suddenly, he didn't feel doped at all -- he started to stand, ignoring the pain of his injuries.

A swirling nimbus of energy appeared above the phone. Alphonse stepped back, squinting his eyes against the glare. Then, decisively, he clapped his hands. The light disappeared.

"There. Our end is activated. Now, once Ed does the same thing on his end, we'll be able to talk. Either of us can activate the system from either end once there's two phones."

"Alphonse?" Mustang said, shaking his head, "I have no hope of even beginning to understand what you just did."

Al shrugged. "It was easy. You could figure it out if you tried."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

--------------------

Edward was silent, in the front seat of her car, arms folded, staring out the window.

"Is it very different from your world?" Elisa asked, trying to strike up a conversation.

"More advanced. There are many more people." Ed sighed, and craned his neck to see up at a particularly tall skyscraper. The sunlight turned his blond hair into spun gold.

Elisa's phone rang; she answered it one-handed, flipping it open. "Maza here."

"It's me," Xanatos said, "Elisa, I've got some news for you about the attack. Can you meet me tonight?"

"Sure, Xanatos. Where do you want to meet?"

"There's an abandoned church ..." Xanatos gave her an address. "We'll meet there about a half hour after dark."

"If you say 'come alone' I'll shoot you myself," Elisa threatened, only half joking.

"Detective, that's why I said half an hour after dusk." Xanatos replied, sounding amused. "But be inconspicuous. It is definitely in the clan's best interests to remain officially rubble for now."

_I might not be willing to call him a friend, exactly, but eleven years after the night of the Hunter's Moon I can finally joke about our past. _Elisa shook her head after closing her cel phone. "Xanatos has some information about the attack."

"That's good." Edward said, sounding like he meant it. "I ... did some reading. I'm not sure how much I found on the ... internet ... was accurate, but I think the general gist of it is that you are the good guys."

"You weren't sure before?" Elisa said, teasing a little.

He didn't smile when he said, very seriously, "I'm not sure of anything yet."

"Smart of you." Elisa added, "Keep that wariness, you may need it. And if I haven't mentioned this before, it's probably best that you don't advertise your abilities with the magic -- or alchemy, as you call it. And keep that arm and leg of yours covered -- we don't have, what did you call it? Automail? Here. At least, not commonly -- google 'The Pack' if you want some reading that'd give you nightmares. Anyway, keep things covered -- it would attract attention."

"I generally do," Edward said, tugging his glove up a little higher on his wrist. "You think I like showing everyone I'm ..." he trailed off, obviously unable to even voice whatever word he'd been thinking.

_Maimed, _Elisa mentally filled in, or _Disfigured, _or, _Not whole. _Something like that.

"At any rate, you don't have to tell _me _about watching my back."

"For what it's worth, you can trust us." Elisa me his eyes at a stoplight. "I swear that to you, Edward."

"How do you know you can trust me?" He challenged.

Elisa lifted one shoulder in half a shrug. "I'm a good judge of people." She grinned at him, "You're prickly and suspicious, and you don't like me much, but I'm thinking underneath all that, there's a good kid."

"I'm not a kid." Edward sounded sullen when he said that. He glared at her.

Elisa grinned. "You're sixteen and I'm thirty-seven. That gives me the right to call you kiddo."

A pout, from Edward. He looked like he wanted to strongly argue the point so she said, "You're young enough to be my son, Edward." She reached out and ruffled his hair, which earned her an even more hostile look, folded arms, and a long-suffering sigh. Elisa bit back a laugh at his expression -- in truth, she was hassling him a bit, because it was so easy to do. The boy needed to lighten up.

"Do you have kids of your own?" He said, after a moment. He didn't sound quite so angry; the look he was giving her now was utterly unreadable.

Elisa swallowed back the sudden pain that question caused. Her good mood vanished. "No. And I won't."

"Why not? Aren't you married?" He glanced at the ring she'd started wearing years ago, to dissuade unwanted attention -- and as a quiet proclamation of her "taken" status.

"As good as." Elisa sighed, and decided the kid needed this truth too, if he would be staying with her. "We keep it pretty quiet and low key for obvious reasons, but Goliath and I? We said vows to each other a long time ago. So no children."

"I ... I saw the look on your face when he came to life. I had wondered." Edward said. She looked at him again, saw no revulsion on his face, just sympathy. "So no kids?"

"It ... genetically, it is actually possible. Gargoyles and humans apparently share quite a few key sections of DNA. It's even been done; you'll meet Delilah eventually. But the only people who know how to do it, who would be willing to attempt it are emphatically not friends of ours." Elisa thought that was an understatement, but stating her true feelings about Nightstone Enterprises would probably scare the kid. "So no kids."

"I'm sorry." Edward smiled faintly. "There's this girl, in Risembool -- her name is Winry Rockbell. I've dreamt sometimes about marrying her and having a big family. Family's important." He grinned, suddenly. "People might find it hard to believe if they know me, but I like kids."

"Winry's your girlfriend?"

Edward snorted. Apparently, she wasn't. "She's my mechanic. For my automail. The best there is. And -- a friend, I guess. I don't think she'd want me, really. Because I'm ..." here, again, he trailed off. "Anyway. She's a friend. I've known her all my life, her and me and Alphonse. The three of us grew up together."

He looked upwards, again, eying the skyscrapers out the Fairlane's window. "She is pretty, though. And smart. She's as smart as I am, maybe smarter. If I'm ever whole again ... yeah, it'd be cool to have a family with her. Someday. If I got Al back human. Al comes first."

"Even if you can't get your arm and leg back," Elisa said quietly, "You ought to ask her how she feels, Ed. She might not care that you're different -- take it from me, it's quite possible to be madly in love with someone who isn't _normal_. If she does care, or if she doesn't want to have a relationship with you for other reasons -- keep looking. There's someone out there for everyone. With a face like yours, I imagine there's plenty of girls who'd be interested."

"I suppose." He fell silent, arms folded, chin tucked to his chest, amber eyes watching the city out the window.

"Kiddo ..." he glared at the word, she ignored the look, "... you were going to tell me about your world ...?"

"Yeah, and I'm going to start with THAT!" Edward jerked upright in the seat so quickly that the seatbelt lock engaged with a thunk, keeping him from lunging forward. With horrified recognition, he exclaimed, "ENVY!"

"A ... dragon?" Elisa swerved to the curb and stared in shock at the long, sinuous, green serpent rippling down the street. It was scattering cars left and right and heading straight in their direction. With sick horror, she realized people were being hurt, maybe dying, as the creature left a path of destruction in its wake.

"Get out of the car! Now!" Ed yanked his seatbelt off, shoved the door open, and bailed. "It's a homunculis! You can't kill it and it's trouble!"

Elisa, gun in hand, headed the other way -- she took two steps out into the street, glanced quickly behind her to verify there wasn't anything a car behind her, took dead aim, and fired every round in her glock in rapid succession at the creature's head. Blood sprayed in a neat pattern centering around its forehead, and it recoiled.

"Elisa!" Ed shouted. "You can't kill him! He's a homunculus!"

Whatever that meant, Elisa didn't know, but it was obvious that the slugs from her gun hadn't done much. The dragon roared and charged towards them and her breath caught in her throat in horror. It was big enough to swallow her _whole_.

Ed clapped both hands together. For the first time, she saw him do his own brand of magic, and was duly impressed -- the ground rippled and a pillar of stone leaped from the earth to strike the dragon in the head and send it flipping backwards half a block.

It landed atop a city bus with a crunch of metal, smashing the bus down to half its size.

Edward made a small, strangled noise beside her. She looked sharply at him, thinking he was somehow hurt, but he was standing upright -- he'd just gone deathly pale. "We've got to take this fight somewhere safer, away from people ..."

"This is Manhattan, kiddo," Elisa said, slamming another clip into her gun. "There isn't anywhere without tons of people."

"Damn him," Edward snapped. He ran for the bus. Elisa followed, not sure what she could do -- but determined to do _something_. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she was desperately wishing for the clan.

The dragon really should have been dead. That was a hell of a blow. But it wasn't -- when Ed was fifteen, twenty feet away, it hissed and flowed off the crumpled remains of the bus and straight at Ed.

He raised an arm -- the metal one -- and dealt it a stunning blow on the end of the nose. The dragon snarled and reared back. Moving faster than any human ought to be able to, he ducked underneath it, clapped his hands, slammed them to the road, and asphalt flowed like water, coating the dragon in a thick, burningly hot mess. The dragon screamed.

Ed appeared out from underneath the dragon, apparently unhurt. He clapped his hands again and the tar coating the dragon ignited.

_Kid's a genius,_ Elisa realized. _Tar burns, and burns hot. How many people would have thought of that?_

The dragon reared back in agony. Jolted out of her shock and surprise at the effective, efficient way that Ed had attacked the creature, she raised her gun and fired her second clip into it, aiming for the eyes. One bullet scored, then another.

Blinded, still burning, the dragon fled.

"Damnit." Ed eyed the bus. They could hear people groaning inside, and cries for help. He clapped his hands again, touched the bus, and reshaped it so that it looked brand new. That didn't help the people inside, except that they were no longer trapped.

He hugged himself, shivering, face looking lost and somehow very young. "I did this."

Elisa touched his shoulder. He flinched away, startled by the contact, then looked up at her, eyes huge in his face. He looked years younger than his actual age. "Why does it always go wrong? No matter what I do, somehow, it always goes wrong."

"C'mon, kiddo, I can hear an ambulance coming. Let's get you out of here before the media arrives. I don't think we want you on the evening news." Elisa put a hand on his back, and this time he didn't pull away. She guided him in the general direction of the Fairlane. He was shivering under her hand, and jumped a bit when someone in the formerly wrecked bus screamed in pain.

"You didn't mean it." Elisa said, softly. "You were trying to stop the dragon."

Ed said, "He's a homunculis. His name's Envy. And I didn't stop him, he just decided to leave and I'm not even sure why he did. He could have killed us all here."

"Lots of burning tar, maybe?" Elisa suggested, opening the passenger side door and steering him into the seat.

"Maybe." Ed didn't sound convinced.

------------------------

Roy stared at the telephone, willing it to ring.

It was silent.

The longer it was silent, the more he worried.

Maybe Al was wrong, and the idea just wouldn't occur to Ed. That was really the best-case scenario.

Ed could be dead. That didn't bear contemplation.

Ed could be in trouble.

That, Roy judged, was the most likely possibility. Because if there was trouble, the Elrics would find it. Wherever Ed was now, he was most likely right in the thick of the biggest mess to be found.

Yeah. Because the phone wasn't ringing, Ed was in trouble.

Roy worried more.

--------------------------

"Maria, he's just a boy." Elisa sipped a cup of coffee strong enough to melt plastic and leaned one hip against Maria's desk.

"A boy who reminds me of a Child of Oberon." Maria Chavez, now police commissioner, once Elisa's boss, regarded Elisa with worried brown eyes. Maria had been around long enough to have a solid knowledge of the magical as well as the mundane. "Maza, I trust your judgment when it comes to the weird stuff, but can _you _trust Edward?"

Elisa glanced towards her office, where she'd left Edward to occupy himself -- _amuse _himself seemed too cheerful a word -- with her internet connection. He'd been pulling up information on microchips when she left, and making notes on a pad of paper. Mathematic formulas had been predominant among his scribblings, and neat little geometric designs.

"I think I do." Elisa sighed, and straightened up and walked to the window. "I dunno, Maria. The kid has an unholy amount of power, but he didn't mean to drop the dragon on the bus, and he's pretty horrified about the injuries. The dragon would have been right on top of us if he hadn't knocked it away."

Chavez tapped her pen against her coffee cup, a nervous habit. Elisa could picture the thoughtful look on Maria's face without even turning around; they'd known each other a very long time.

"What does your boyfriend say?"

"Goliath? I haven't had a chance to really talk to him about it, but I'm sure he'll have mixed feelings." Elisa ran a hand over her hair. She wasn't actually looking forward to that conversation. Goliath owed Ed his life, but that didn't mean Goliath was going to be grateful -- and Ed's attitude of generalized low-grade hostility wasn't going to help matters. "You know what Goliath's opinion of magic is. Or alchemy, as Ed calls it, but I fail to see the distinction."

Maria murmured, "Any science sufficiently advanced will appear to be magic ..."

"Yeah, pretty much.." Elisa shrugged. "Any magic sufficiently advanced will appear to be science. There's a flip side to that law."

Elisa nodded. "At any rate, I haven't had much of a chance to discuss things with him, but I suspect Goliath will see him as a kid in trouble. As I do. I want to help him get home, if I can. If not ..." Elisa sighed. "If not, if there's no way for him to get him, we'll deal."

"What about the dragon?"

Ed had filled her in on the details of the dragon. Elisa explained, "He's from Ed's world. Ed was fighting him in a final battle -- he crossed over, and then Ed did a little later. Um. Ed died, Maria, in that fight and his brother brought him back but was lost in the gate in the process of doing so. What they call human transmutation -- bringing people back from the dead -- is apparently extremely dangerous.

"Ed then sacrificed himself to bring Alphonse back -- Alphonse is his brother -- but he didn't die, he ended up here. He doesn't know if he succeeded in bringing Al back to life or not."

Elisa couldn't quite conceal the utter horror Ed's story -- which he'd told in a flat, unemotional voice -- had for her. _Anubis_ ... _bringing the dead back to life doesn't exactly work well on this world either. _

Maria shuddered. "Morbid story."

"Yeah. More than you probably know." Elisa sighed. "Goliath is pretty weirded out. There's a hell of a lot the kid's not he's not telling me, too. Not because he's being evasive, I don't think -- I just think he doesn't want to talk about it. He's hurting, Maria. I've seen it before."

_Goliath, once upon a time. When we first met. They have the same edge -- though if anything, Ed's much worse than Goliath ever was. And Goliath effectively committed suicide in 994, when he asked the Magus to freeze him into stone. _

"He's only sixteen." Maria leaned back in her chair and chewed on the end of her pen for a moment. "Do we tell him about the people in the bus?"

Two dead. Fourteen injured, four critically.

"I won't lie to him, Maria. And something tells me that kid lost his innocence a long, long time ago." Elisa blew out a short, sharp, angry breath. "Back to the dragon -- it's what he calls a homunculis. They're created when you try to bring someone back from the dead. The result isn't human, it's a homunculis -- a creature without a soul. Immensely powerful and very difficult to kill, too."

Maria suddenly made a strangled noise, and sat up in her chair. "Created when you bring someone back from the dead, he said?"

Elisa met Maria's eyes, puzzled at first, then with awful dawning realization. "The clan ..." she whispered.

"I think you need to have another talk with Edward." Maria exhaled sharply, leaned back in the chair.

"Uh, yeah." Elisa grabbed her coat off the back of a chair in Maria's office and headed for the door.

"Elisa?" Maria said, her voice a bit sharp. "Let me know if you need anything. This isn't the old days where you have to keep secrets. Make sure the clan remembers too."

"I know, I know." Elisa gave Chavez a brief smile. "And thanks."

The _thanks_ meant more than just for the immediate offer. She'd found out significantly after the fact that Maria had known about the clan almost from the beginning, and had quietly kept silent, covered up what needed concealing from her superiors and the media, and trusted Elisa to take care of what needed being done. Maria had the smarts to know that not everything was a job for the police, but it had taken Elisa longer than she cared to admit to realize this.

However, having a ready line of open and frank communication between the police department and the clan -- that had made quite a bit of difference.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

-------------------

Author's Notes: I should mention that I've been a fan of Gargoyles pretty much since the beginning. I'm not obsessive about the show, but I enjoy it (and the fans!) enough to have stuck around through the years. Seems some people think I'm a newbie because they've never heard of me before. I know it's been awhile, so I don't expect everyone to know of me (or remember me) but I'm really not a newbie, honest.

For the record, I am very well aware of "Timedancer" and the other ideas put forth by Greg. I am cheerfully ignoring it for this story for simplicity's sake. I'm also more-or-less ignoring The Goliath Chronicles, though I do tend to incorporate a few of the elements of the TGC in my work because a few things actually made sense.

-------------------

Ed wasn't in her office. Also, the telephone on her desk was missing.

Elisa clapped a hand to her forehead, said a rude word, and stepped back out into the hall. No Ed. No nobody because most of the force was dealing with the aftermath of the dragon-homunculi-whatever creature's attack and the station was deserted except for a handful of secretaries.

Moments later, she spotted Bluestone hurrying through the lobby, and asked, "Did you see which way the blond boy wonder went?"

"He asked where you were," Bluestone frowned. "He was carrying a telephone."

"Damn. He never found me." Elisa had a suspicion that the kid hadn't _intended _to find her, and that he'd finally bolted -- something she'd been half expecting him to do anyway. _Do I even _want _to know what he's going to do with the phone?_

_------------------_

"Al. Al?" The bronze haired figure slumped over the forbidden books didn't move when Roy called his name. A clock tower nearby had just struck two in the morning, to Roy's surprise. They'd both been plowing through books, searching for an answer to questions they barely dared voice. He hurt too much to sleep; they'd cut back his morphine by his request and, while he was now reasonably clear headed, sleep wasn't going to come easily tonight.

It was obvious there was something -- a world, or more likely multiple worlds -- beyond the gate. They'd determined that, from scattered accounts in the books. Al and Ed weren't the first to dare the forbidden, nor would they be the last. But the gritty specifics needed to face down that hell and survive ... the answers weren't there. Because nobody had ever done it with both body and soul intact and come back to talk about it.

_Never say 'never' to an Elric, _Roy thought with exhausted amusement.

Roy threw a pillow at Al when simply calling his name didn't wake him. The result was spectacular; Alphonse leaped to his feet and crouched in an aggressively threatening pose _before _his eyes were fully open. He blinked a couple of times, stared at the pillow at his feet, then bent over and wordlessly handed it back to Roy.

"Go to bed," Roy said, feeling only tired. Al had the battle honed reflexes of an old war veteran; he'd not expected that reaction out of a fourteen year old boy. He'd not been thinking, to tell the truth. Alphonse had seen horrors in the last few years.

"Sleep here." Al said, looking towards a chair.

"No. Go to bed. Go back to your room. The books will be here in the morning. Your brother's smart, he's not going to do anything ..." Roy was about to say _stupid_, but even at two in the morning, his brain worked better than that. He substituted, "... anything that would prevent us from retrieving him. Eh?"

"Brother." Al said, quietly, mournfully.

"Go on. Come back about ten tomorrow." He had physical therapy scheduled for his shattered body in the morning. He _didn't _want Al around to hear him scream, because he would, like a baby.

Al regarded him uncertainly.

"Go one. It's two in the morning; your brother's not likely to call now."

Which, of course, jinxed things. Roy was half asleep, mind wandering in a sort of pain-filled fugue, when the phone rang. For a moment he was irritated -- who would call his hospital room at 2:15 in the morning?

He hurt. It hurt almost too much to sit up and grab the receiver. But he did, when he remembered through a sleepy haze _why _the phone would be ringing.

"Mustang." He answered it, trying to keep the gleeful crow out of his voice.

Silence, for a moment. Then across a connection that was scratchy and tinny and echoing, "... You? General?"

"Yes, me. Edward, do you have _any _idea what time it is?" The snark came out before he could stop it. What he really wanted to say was more along the lines of, "EDWARD!!! You're alive!!!" but really, that went without saying, since that was indisputably Edward's voice. He'd recognized it even with two words. And it felt _good _to snap at Edward -- a familiar old pattern.

Silence, again. He could well picture Edward's suspicious look; the amber eyes burning beneath a fall of golden bangs. "Where's my brother?"

"Asleep. It's oh-two hundred, Fullmetal."

Again a moment of quiet. He realized there was a lag in the connection. "Did it work?"

"Yes, idiot, it worked. Your brother is sans one suit of armor, plus one living body, and by the way, where the hell are you and how do we get you home?" Roy didn't manage to keep the glee out of his voice now.

The pause before Edward's response was a bit longer than before. Finally, he said, with an utter sigh of relief, ".. I wasn't sure."

"Edward. Home. Ideas?" Roy prompted.

"I haven't a fucking clue," Edward said. "And there's a problem here, too, that I've got to solve before I come home."

Roy sighed. 'No fucking clue' from the boy prodigy generally wasn't a good thing if the question was of an alchemic nature. "I got Al full access to the library records."

"About time!" Roy wasn't imagining that the snark in that voice got considerably snarkier. Another pause that wasn't a time lag, then Ed said, "Can you get my brother?"

"I just sent him to bed, Ed. He's exhausted. Why don't you call in the morning? Trust me ..."

"I don't trust you," Ed said, flatly. Roy could easily imagine the hostile glare of the boy's golden eyes, and the angry set of his shoulders. "I don't trust you at _all_. How many times have you lied to me, General?"

Mustang winced internally, because he knew that Ed was right. It had all been necessary -- he'd just wanted to protect the kid -- but the level of anger in Ed's voice was formidable. He also contemplated harassing the boy on general principles, but he just hurt too much and besides, he wasn't sure how stable the link was between worlds. He sighed. "I'll have someone go after him ..."

"Do that." Two very hostile words.

Mustang set the handset down. "NURSE!" he shouted in the direction of the hospital room's open door.

No answer. He sighed and picked the phone back up. He frowned at the base, which was glowing faintly purple -- it hadn't been doing that a minute ago. "I'll need to track someone down ..."

"Nurse?" Ed said, in amusement. "Is that what you call your latest girlfriend?"

"No, that's what I call the _nurse, _Fullmetal," Mustang snapped, needled. Damned brat ... "I'm in the hospital."

Another long silence, then Ed asked, "Did you succeed in killing the Furher?"

"Yeah, but he put a sword through me," Mustang said, "Then Hawkeye managed to shoot me."

"Deliberately?" The snark was back.

"No, not deliberately, Edward. She shot Archer, I was behind Archer," Mustang responded, "Wait, Fullmetal, I'll go track down a nurse and have her go get your brother ..."

Getting out of bed was an interesting exercise in pain. Aware that Ed could probably hear him groan even though he'd set the handset down on the table he bit his lip and managed to stay silent. He moved slowly, first balancing his weight on his feet, and pushing himself upright. When his back stopped spasming he hesitantly took a step, and then another, towards the door.

Outside, the hall was quiet -- he limped barefoot, supporting himself against the wall, to the nurse's station. The nurse on duty gave him an alarmed look. "You should not be out of bed!"

"Tell me about it." Roy grumbled. "Listen, can you send someone after Alphonse? His brother's on the phone."

"Can't his brother call back later?" The woman said. "It's two AM!"

"Afraid not. And it's urgent ..." Roy tried to look charming. He suspected the effect was more 'pitiful and pleading' given that he hadn't had a shower in two days due to his stitches, his hair was standing on end from being in bed, and he was wearing an eye-patch. In any event, the nurse was giving him a very dubious look. He took a deep breath, and said, "That's an _order _..."

WHOOOOMPHHHHHHH!

The concussion knocked him off his feet. He hit the ground with an awful wave of pain from his injuries. For a moment, his vision went dark and nausea rose. Before he was even thinking clearly, however, sheer adrenalin forced him back to his feet. He could hear the nurse screaming, and somewhere, awful howls of pain that didn't even sound human.

He blinked. Purple afterimages blocked his sight in his one remaining eye. He rubbed at it with little effect. He couldn't _see _the threat, and terror made his heart race. _Please, not blind, not blind ... loosing half my sight bad enough, please not blind ..._

Power crackled over his skin. Alchemy, and something else, something wild and fey and complex, akin to nothing he'd ever felt before. Time might have passed; he wasn't sure. His head was swimming and slick warmth trickled down his face; he smelled blood.

Someone grabbed his arm. He snapped his fingers in reflex, realized he wasn't wearing gloves, and flung a punch that didn't connect with anything. Distantly, through ringing ears, he heard someone shouting his name.

His vision was clearly a bit, to his utter relief. Bronze-blond hair was close to his face. Grey-brown eyes were peering into his. _Alphonse_ -- Who had, apparently, not gotten as far as he'd expected in the roughly twenty minutes since evicting the kid from his room, that, or he'd been standing swaying in the corridor longer than he'd thought.

"What happened?" He read the boy's lips more than heard what he said.

He didn't answer, since he didn't actually _have _an answer. Instead, he stared past Alphonse, at the ... uh-oh.

Alphonse followed his gaze. Grimaced. "Something fouled up."

"Yeah."

A great portal swirling with purple and red and black hung in the air, occupying a sizable amount of space roughly where his room had been. "Were you _in _there?" Alphonse asked, sounding alarmed now. The kid looked back at him, quickly -- scanned him head to toe -- and Roy wondered if he was checking for missing body parts.

"No. If I was, I think I'd be dead." Mustang said. "I don't know what happened ... your brother called, and the power felt a little unbalanced but I didn't think it was going to go unstable like that ... is that the Gate?"

"Not the Gate of Truth, but it is a portal to another world, if my guess is right." Alphonse said. He sounded grimly angry -- at himself -- when he added, "I had to have made a mistake ..."

"Or Edward did, on his end," Mustang pointed out. He hadn't forgotten _which _brother passed the written part of the state alchemist's exam -- and it wasn't the one prone to impulsive, reckless behavior. Al wasn't likely to make an error in a formula unless his information going into a problem was bad. Unfortunately, one of the Elric brothers' more aggravating flaws was that Edward tended to lead and Al to (sometimes protesting) follow -- of course, this was also one of their strengths, because Edward's brilliance was at least partly due to his willingness to take chances.

Roy well understood this dynamic. Appreciated it. And sometimes, he wanted to strangle both of them -- Ed for leading badly and Alphonse for not having the sense to say, _No! _

Alphonse glanced sideways at him. Considered the possibility that Ed had screwed up, again. Then he said, "Hmm."

"Any idea how to close that thing?"

"Uh-uh. And --" something _appeared _in the mouth of the portal. A great winged figure, hulking, grotesque. It leaped into the hospital corridor, claws tearing up chunks of linoleum and cement from the floor. "-- Oh, that might be a problem."

"What the hell is that thing?" Mustang demanded.

"Haven't a clue. Umm. Given that it just came out of a portal, it might be a homunculus," Alphonse started backing away, "or something other."

More winged figures appeared. They growled, eyes glowing, claws making divots in the floor. Tails lashed. Wings flexed. And they exuded an aura that wasn't alchemic at all ... it was the same as the strange, alien power that had washed over him earlier.

Alphonse clapped his hands, slammed his palms to the floor, and lifted a barrier between them and the winged creatures. "Let's get out of here, Mustang. You're in no shape to fight and they sure as hell don't look friendly!"

"Running?" Mustang protested.

"I'm _not _getting in a fight with -- arcane creatures -- in the middle of a hospital full of patients. The whole building feels like it's about to come down around our ears. I'll get you out then come back for the other people!"

Al ducked under his arm -- Mustang would have protested the assistance, except that things seemed to be going black again. He was dimly aware of being half-carried, half-dragged out of the building and pushed into the hands of concerned-sounding people. He couldn't quite make out what they were saying, however, and despite his best efforts, awareness faded away to black.


	7. Chapter 7

Alchemy and Magic

Chapter 7

------------------------------

Author's Notes: Special thanks to Spiritwolf who helped me figure out a number of points for the next few chapters by asking intelligent questions -- including asking what the seven sins of the gargoyles would be --and telling me about a few important points that I didn't know. He knows FMA far better than I do. (And, also, as a bonus, over dinner with Scott and I and Beedoo!, he made me laugh until my sides hurt with his _ahem _impressions of Roy Mustang, Flaming Alchemist!)

------------------------------

_Whoooomph._

The building shook. Ceiling tiles rained down. The electricity went out; the emergency lights flipped on. A fire alarm shrilled. People screamed. A shockwave of dust and debris rolled down the hall. All this happened in several overlapping seconds, and Elisa stood in absolute shock, cup of coffee in one hand, not even sure which way to run. This was not the first time she'd been around explosions, by far -- hell, it was the second time in two days -- but she couldn't even tell where it had _come _from.

Ground level or rooftop? Elsewhere in the building? Her mind churned through several possibilities that ranged from relatively mundane -- gas explosion -- to several options that involved magic. Ed and trouble associated with him was high on the list.

Stillness settled. The building creaked. People stared at one another.

"Bomb!" Chavez came out of her office shouting. "Everyone out! Now!"

And the evacuation was on -- the instinct to get out of a building that had just been attacked was a spinal reflex in New Yorkers these days. Elisa, however, hesitated, torn between the impulse to flee and a gut level feeling that she knew who -- if not what -- had just caused the disaster.

"Elisa! Out!" Chavez planted a hand in the middle of Elisa's back and gave her a shove in the direction of the stairs. "Go!"

Galvanized into action, Elisa ran -- but when she opened the door she spun against the tide of people swarming out of the building and headed _up. _She had no idea where the blast had come from, but instinct told her that the clock tower would have been a _great _place for a young alchemist seeking a hiding place. _If he's been attacked by that dragon creature and hurt or killed ... _Guilt struck her with painful force. _He's just a kid! I don't care how tough he thinks he is, he's just a kid. He needs people looking out for him!_

She dove and struggled past her colleagues, dodging several attempts by people (including Captain Morgan) to grab her and sweep her along with the flow heading out and down. "Sorry! This is _my _type of business!" she snapped at Morgan.

Morgan, veteran of more decades on the force than Elisa, gave her a startled look and let go of her arm. "Be careful, Maza," was all he said, hurrying past her.

_It makes life so much simpler now that my colleagues know about at least some of the weird stuff._

Her type of business had been behind the _last _time the precinct had been bombed by terrorists as well. _Jason ... I really should give him a call_, she thought, irrelevantly. It had been awhile since she'd talked to the former Hunter -- he'd turned into such a good friend, after all was said and done, but he had his own life now, and she hers.

At the top of the stairway, the trap door was hanging askew and smoke curled through the opening. Yup, the clock tower had gotten it good a second time ... She'd been right -- much to her dismay. She scrambled through the opening into the smoky, dark interior. Flames crackled around the crumpled and hulking remnants of the clock mechanism. Through the smoke, purple light glowed, touched here and there with orange flames. She could see a gaping, swirling portal.

"Crap!" Elisa crawled through the opening and on her hands and knees tried to peer under the smoke. "EDWARD! Are you in here?"

"Fucking god damned _magic_!" That was Edward Elric, all right, and he sounded remarkably pissed.

"Where are you?" She crawled towards his voice.

"Elisa! Get out of here! I've stabilized the building but I have no idea what that portal's going to do or what may come out of it!" She heard the distinctive _clap _of Edward's alchemy and a large chunk of a cement wall, powdered down to find sand, flowed freely across the floor and buried and smothered the flames.

_Smart kid._

That left the portal itself, which still loomed large and dangerous-looking.

Edward coughed hard, sounding like he was choking. She zeroed in on the sound, crawled to him and spotted a red coat through the haze. Edward was standing up -- she reached up, grabbed him by his belt, and yanked him off his feet. "Get below the smoke. It's probably full of toxic crap."

"Hey!" He protested being manhandled.

"We need to get out of here." She pulled him not towards the staircase but rather towards the landing on the roof. The air was much clearer outside. It was past sunset now, and the clan _would _come to investigate this. She was amazed that Goliath hadn't arrived yet.

"Got to ... close the ... portal!" He was breathing harshly, and she was alarmed to see blood in his blond hair.

"Hold on a second ..." she reached into her coat pocket, pulled out one of the latex gloves that _every _detective carried, and snapped the glove on out of sheer though-shalt-not-touch-bodily-fluids-under-any-circumstances ingrained habit. She had a flashlight on her belt and used it to check him over thoroughly.

The gash on his forehead was deep and bleeding freely, right at the hairline. He winced when she parted his hair, looking for other injuries, and swatted at her fingers with his metal hand. He missed, and seemed somewhat shaky.

"Crap, kid, you're definitely going to need stitches. I'm not sure how we're going to explain you to the emergency room docs." This was going to be a problem -- Ed's automail wasn't completely beyond the abilities of medical science in this world -- witness the creepiness of the Pack as evidence of that (1) -- but it would generate questions that she'd rather not answer.

She shone her light into his eyes. He winced, and held a hand up, but he honestly wasn't protesting the attention as much as she'd expected. That worried her more than his injuries. She sat back on her heels and thought for a minute. He needed emergency care immediately.

"You hurt anywhere else?"

"I need to close that portal, Elisa!" He tried to struggle to his feet and she pushed him back down. There was a note of frantic desperation in his voice. "This is my fault!"

"How are you going to do that?" She was starting to be able to read him pretty well. When he tried to stand up a third time, she snapped, "Sit down!"

Elisa was used to dealing with a rather large assortment of beings, both good and bad, and almost all of them significantly bigger than she was. She used her cop voice on him -- the one that could make even Goliath stop short and pay attention.

Edward sat.

"Thank you. Now, tell me _exactly _how you intend to close that portal." Elisa said, crouching beside him. She was willing to let him try if he actually had an idea -- because the portal _did _need to be closed.

"I don't know!" For a moment, he coughed, and coughed, gagging, drawing deep rasping breaths. Then he insisted, "But it's my fault!"

"What were you _doing_?" She asked, after a brief glance skyward. Still no sign of the clan. Well, maybe they hadn't heard the news yet. Derek had a police scanner in the labyrinth, though, so they should find out pretty quickly.

"Trying to talk to my brother." He said, softly. It almost sounded like a confession. "It would have worked. But I forgot about the magic!"

"Magic?"

"That creature -- is it a homunculis? -- that closed the Gate of Truth. It used _magic_ to do it. And the amount of power was just incredible. When I opened a portal between worlds there was already an imbalance in place -- the exchange wasn't equivalent -- I didn't even _think _about it." He shook his head, and wiped his metal hand over his face. There was blood smeared on the steal -- he stopped talking and stared at his fingers.

Elisa thought about that for a moment. "Sounds like there was already an imbalance in place and when you messed around with things it backfired?"

"Pretty much." He wiped his hand on his black jeans and coughed until he gasped for breath. "Damnit, my head hurts."

"Yeah, I'm not surprised." She shrugged out of her jacket and stripped off her sweater -- beneath it, she wore a t-shirt. "Here." She wadded the sweater against the cut.

"I need to close that portal ..." He held the sweater to his head with his left hand, steel fingers again smeared with blood.

"If you don't know how, you might make things worse." Elisa said. She was trying to figure out how much of his insistence on closing the portal was Ed being stubborn against the face of a fairly significant injury, and how much was a head injury talking. Partly to assess his lucidity and partly because she _did _need to know, she asked, "What happens if we leave it open for a bit?"

"I dunno. It's dangerous."

"No shit, Sherlock." _That _much was obvious, judging by the state of the clock tower.

He blinked at her.

She made an executive decision -- the kid was in no state to do anything that required clear thought. She'd let one of the others who knew magic (or alchemy, or whatever the fuck this was) deal with it in a few minutes. Owen and/or Xanatos ought to be showing up shortly before or after the clan, and she wouldn't be surprised if the fuss brought some of the city's other heavy-hitters. But Owen, demonstratably, _could _handle things when Edward's oh-so-special form of magic backfired on him.

Her resolve to _not _let him touch anything else tonight grew as she remembered this was the second -- no, third -- well, actually -- _fourth _time she'd seen him either directly screw something up or seen the evidence after. There had been reviving the clan (she was thankful for that, but ...), and landing the dragon-thing on the bus (people had died!) and the dragon thing itself (here because of something he'd done in the past) and now this.

Possibly, his simple presence here constituted evidence of a _fifth _screw-up.

And, she added to her mental count his automail arm and leg -- that was a legacy of screw-up number six, if she understood what he'd told her about his past correctly. She suspected he had a rather large number of other foul ups in his history that were of a significant scale -- these were only the ones she knew about. _And I've only known him three days!_

"Ed, you closing it's dangerous right now too, right? We'll talk to Owen -- who, by the way, is _not _a homunculus if I understand your definition of the word correctly. He's a Child of Oberon."

"Child of ..."

"Elisa!" That was Goliath -- _with _Xanatos. Goliath landed on the wall with the billionaire in his arms. Elisa blinked, blinked again, frowned, then noted that Brooklyn, behind Goliath, had a boy with him. Ah, yes, the _other _Child of Oberon living at the castle. Somehow, Goliath had connected with the Xanatos. She was betting cel phones had been involved, and some actual intelligent thinking -- Alexander along was a _good _thing, though she was wondering where the Puck was.

"Owen's on Avalon." Xanatos explained, briefly, as Goliath set him down, answering her unspoken question and confirming her guesses. "I called Goliath as soon as I saw the news ...What the hell happened here?"

Elisa winced at the comment _news _-- she was certain the clock tower was the focus of a swarm of journalists right now, probably making global headlines given this was NYC. "Edward happened."

She glanced at Edward, expecting a reaction. Edward only gave her a look that was frighteningly still and non-reactive. Something was very wrong with the boy.

"The dragon earlier today was something that came over from his side, too."

"Dragon?" Goliath asked.

"Fill you in later," Elisa said -- Goliath had been frozen in stone and wouldn't know.

"People _died_," Xanatos said, hissing dismay in his voice. He frowned down at Edward, who went completely dead white at Xanatos' words.

"On the bus," Edward stated, flatly.

She hadn't wanted to tell Edward about that in this particular way -- whatever else he was, he wasn't a bad kid, and _that _incident had been mostly not his fault. She could see the same thing happening in a fight involving the clan. Friendly fire, and God, she hated that phrase ... She crouched again beside him and said, "Edward, you were trying to help."

Haunted amber eyes searched her face. Bitterly, he said, "I'm _always _trying to help."

"How bad is he hurt?" Xanatos asked, quietly.

"He took a good knock to the head. He'll need stitches, and I'm not sure he doesn't have a concussion." Elisa squeezed Edward's shoulder -- or tried to, her hands felt metal. Ed gave her an unreadable look. "Not sure if taking him to the emergency room is the best thing, though ..."

"We can take him to my medical facilities at the castle," Xanatos said. "I'll call my doctor -- I do have a decent one on call, and I promise, he bears no resemblance to a mad scientist."

"Thanks." Elisa said, and after all these years, the word still tasted bitter in her mouth. Because once, there had been mad scientists.

"Brooklyn, please put me down," _That _came from the red-haired boy, who until now had been watching with wide eyes and not saying anything. That silence was very much typical of Alexander -- he was a quiet one who generally observed more than interacted. Brooklyn, however, hesitated and looked to Xanatos.

Xanatos nodded. "Go ahead, Brooklyn."

"Who's the kid?" Edward asked, dully.

"Xanatos' son." Elisa explained.

Alexander said, squinting past Elisa and into the interior of the clocktower, "Papa, I think I can close the portal."

"He's a kid!" Edward protested, with the most energy she'd seen out of him in several minutes.

"So are you." Elisa snorted. She turned to Alexander and asked quietly, "Are you _sure_?"

The little boy nodded. "I c'n see the lines of power. It's an odd kind magic, but it's got some clear rules to it. There's some of the Puck's magic mixed up in it, so things went bad when he," he nodded at Edward, "tried to open it. He didn't factor in the lingering influence of fey power. He shoulda bled it off first. Easy enough to do."

This was all said in a tone of quiet competence. Though only ten, Alexander was brilliant -- he'd been doing fairly significant magic since he was in diapers under the skilled tutelage of Owen. More than that, however, he was _smart _-- he was cautious and careful and he got things right. Even Goliath didn't object (much) to Alexander's magic use these days. She'd never seen him screw anything up.

"It needs to be closed. I think it's sending out some pretty strong energy and it's only going to get stronger. Gamma rays 'n x-rays n' stuff. It's a wormhole through quite a bit of hard space. Not much threat to me," Alexander's fey blood was protection against a number of hazards, "But you guys might want to keep clear of it. You're fine standing here, with the cement of the tower between you and it, but you don't want to get too close."

"Crap!" Elisa swore -- she hadn't considered that the thing might be radioactive -- then she apologized, "Sorry, Alex."

He grinned at her, baring very white teeth in a silent laugh that said a lot about his trickster heritage. Alex, though young, had doubtless heard far worse -- some of it provoked either by his own actions or those of his tutor. He never actually _hurt _anyone, but some of his pranks were legendary.

_How old was he again when he switched bodies with Goliath and I?_

And this was also not the first time that his father had brought the boy along to solve an arcane problem. Xanatos' faith in his son was pretty high, though Elisa had an idea that Fox wasn't aware that Xanatos had brought the boy. He screwed his face up and squinted through the doorway at the churning purple light. "It's not too much to be really dangerous or I'da said something. But like I said, it'll get worse."

"He can do it, Elisa," That was Xanatos.

Edward, curiously, was dead silent. Elisa was starting to get very worried about him -- he should have been throwing a stinking fit right about now. "Goliath, can you take Edward back to the castle? Be _careful_, the guys who attacked you ..."

"... are still out there, yes, Elisa." Goliath said in a tone of long-suffering patience with her concerns.

She flashed him a grin. "You know I have to say it."

"You know I always am." He walked over to Edward, and before Edward could even protest, neatly picked the boy up.

"Hey!" Edward's reaction was a bit delayed.

"I'll call my doctor, have him meet Ed there." Xanatos pulled his cel phone out. "Alex, go ahead and do what you need to."

Alexander nodded, and with a very serious expression, approached the portal. He stood quietly for a moment, then suddenly _reached_ and Elisa saw the air shimmer and swirl around him. The boy vanished, having slipped into the void between worlds.

"He'll take it apart from the inside," Xanatos said. Though no real magic user himself (except for a bit of ill-advised sorcery here and there with Owen's help) he knew quite a it about how his son worked. "If he tried to dismantle it from the outside, the other end would recoil."

---------------------------

Goliath landed on the tallest castle tower and set Edward down. The teen was unresisting, but far too quiet. He stood, shoulders hunched, arms folded, very still.

"We need to have a talk," Goliath rumbled.

"Thought you were supposed to take me to the doctor," the boy said, sullenly.

Goliath sighed, and studied him. The blood matting his hair was drying; the bleeding had stopped. And the teen's amber eyes were clear and lucid. "A doctor can't fix what's wrong with you, Ed. The rest will keep a few minutes."

"What does that mean?" Edward glared at Goliath with amber eyes. His face was smeared with flaking blood, and his expression was uniquely hostile.

Goliath took a step forward. Edward backed up and bumped into the low parapet wall around the tower. Goliath planted a hand on the stone on either side of the kid and rumbled down at him, "What do you think you were _doing _back there?"

Edward's eyes flashed in anger. "Trying to contact my brother!"

"By endangering the lives of hundreds of people?" Goliath let some of his anger touch his voice, and light his eyes. Edward shrank back -- Goliath could see that the kid was suddenly breathing hard, eyes huge.

Edward made quick motion, hands coming together for a clap of power. Goliath was faster -- he caught one of Edward's forearms in each of his hands with lightning speed. "Do _not _try it, little boy."

"Let go of me!" Edward kicked at him -- Goliath, veteran of a thousand brawls, easily deflected the attempt to land a blow where it would have counted with a casual flick of his tail.

"Stop it!" Goliath roared down at the child. He put effort into the shout; it was loud enough to shake the building.

Edward froze, panting hard, eyes huge.

Goliath snarled, lower but menacing, "I'm not going to hurt you. So _stop _it."

Edward didn't look like he was the slightest bit reassured. Goliath could feel his pulse racing where his fingers pressed against the kid's flesh wrist.

"We have two choices here," Goliath growled at him, not liking the way the boy was glaring at him. "You promise not to hit me with any of your magic or I take your arm off at the shoulder."

"You wouldn't. Elisa would kill you." Edward said, but he didn't sound very certain about that. He suddenly sounded frightened and very small. Goliath figured that Elisa was going to be furious when word of this got back to her. He didn't care. Elisa would get over it; this issue needed to be addressed _now_. He waited without saying a word.

"Okay! No alchemy."

"Say it like you mean it." Goliath wasn't fooled. His grip tightened just a bit, enough to be uncomfortable. He fully intended to do as he'd threatened if necessary; they could fix that steel limb later and he was in no mood to be hexed -- or whatever it was that the kid did when he clapped. The evening's news had shown very good images of Edward at work, tackling the dragon in front of a lucky reporter with a camera. The child was deadly dangerous and Goliath fully intended to live through this discussion.

Resentfully, but with more honesty, the kid muttered, "I promise."

Goliath let Edward pull free. The boy folded his arms and glowered upward, silent and hostile. Those amber eyes were burning like coals under a fall of blood-matted blond hair.

"This is my city," Goliath said, low and angry. "You were very reckless and very stupid."

"I didn't know that would happen. I thought I had it figured out."

"That is my _point_!" Goliath bit out. "You want to do dangerous magic? _Fine_. Do it where you won't put other people in danger. You're old enough to take your own chances; I won't stop you. However, this is_ my _city and I _will _protect it. Do you understand me? I do not want to consider you an enemy because you are simply too stupid to avoid putting lives in danger."

Silence, from the kid. Goliath could see his jaw working and a vein on his forehead pulsing. Finally, the boy demanded, "Are you done yet?"

"No." Goliath growled.

"I'm not stupid. I'm the youngest State Alchemist _ever_." Anger, there, and pride both. "I'm considered a prodigy."

"Fine." Goliath was unimpressed by this. "Be a prodigy where it doesn't _put lives in danger_."

More silence.

"You were reckless, boy. I cannot excuse that kind of stupidity."

"I ..." hesitation, now. "I just wanted to talk to my brother."

"I don't care if you wanted to talk to God." Goliath folded his arms and stared down at the boy -- who was, Goliath realized, matching him look for look. It was amazing that a kid that physically tiny, and that young, had the stones to stand up to him -- Goliath had seen people _faint _simply at their first close-up glimpse of him. Edward was scared, but he was pissed, too. Goliath sighed, and ran a hand over his head. He had a sudden urge to go beat something up. It would be far simpler than dealing with this boy. "Look, Edward, I really would rather consider you an ally than an enemy. But I have responsibilities that are far greater than my sympathy for one boy. Do you understand?"

"Yeah." Sullen.

"Good."

Unexpectedly, the kid said, "I ... I'd do the same thing, if I were in your shoes." A pause, and amber eyes were searching his face, then just as quickly glancing down, perhaps noting Goliath's shoeless feet. A blink, from the kid, but no humor on his face. Goliath fought the urge to wiggle his clawed toes. Edward said, voice very quiet now, "I ... I've screwed up so bad so many times. You're right not to trust me, you know."

Goliath heaved a sigh, and moved away from the kid. He felt a little awkward and somewhat apologetically, he said, "We all make mistakes. The heavens know I have. What separates us, good from evil, is how we solve things when we make those mistakes."

"I ... I'm _trying_." Edward stood silently, for a long, long moment. His stared out at the city, arms folded, head bowed. "I'm trying to set everything right. But the harder I try, the more things go wrong."

Goliath gently set his hand down on the kid's shoulder. Edward didn't flinch away -- Goliath wasn't sure he was aware of the touch. He could feel cold steel and warm skin through the kid's thin t-shirt. "I do not know what to tell you, Edward, other than to say I, too, have seen my best intentions go very badly wrong. It hurts; it is a failure and you feel like you are worthless and useless. There is anger, isn't there? And grief that feels so hot and horrible that it feels as if it ought to consume you alive. I know these terrible feelings well. And for me, in the end, things were -- well, not right, because they will _never _be set right -- but I have found a place to belong and a purpose here. In the end, perhaps this was my destiny all along."

A hiccup, from the kid. Goliath realized he was crying, now. Awkwardly, Goliath removed his hand, unsure what to do or say. He didn't deal well with tears, particularly not from a boy who was very much a young warrior. _He's not too far from being a man. He's right at that awkward stage where he isn't, not yet, but he wants so badly to be an adult. It's a rough time in anyone's life, but far tougher for this child, I think._

Edward wiped at his eyes with his living hand, then walked to the very edge of the tower. Goliath joined him, saying nothing. What else was there to say? After a moment, he put his hand back on the boy's shoulder, sensing that Edward would accept no more comfort than that -- but needing to offer what little he could.

After several minutes, Edward said, "Goliath? Thank you."

"Mmm. Let's get your head looked at. You're going to need stitches." Goliath guided Edward towards the stairs before lifting his hand from the boy's back.

"Fuck. I hate needles."

----------------------

(1) Regarding The Pack and, ah, cybernetic enhancements, I will never look at Jackal the same way after a certain Christine Morgan story. Years after reading it, I _still _get a case of the snickers whenever the subject of The Pack comes up.


End file.
